Bffl  HBHi 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


GIFT 


t 


THE  INVISIBLE  EVENT 
J.     D.     BERESFORD 


THE  INVISIBLE 
EVENT 


BY 

J.  D.  BERESFORD 

AUTHOR  or  "THE  HOUSE  IN  DEMETRIUS  ROAD."  "JACOB  STAHL,' 
"A  WORLD  OF  WOMEN"  ETC.,  ETC. 


NEW  YORK 
GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 


Copyright,  1915, 
By  GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 


PR- 


TO 
BEATRICE 


CONTENTS 


BOOK  I 

TWO  DAYS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I    MORNING n 

II    BLOOMSBURY 19 

III    BEECHCOMBE 40 

'IV    DECISION 58 


BOOK  II 

SEPARATION 

V  POOR  MRS.  PARMENTER 75 

VI  PARTNERS  AND  A  PARTNERSHIP 90 

VII  A  WEDDING 108 

VIII  THE  AMAZING  LETTER 119 


BOOK  III 
SOLITUDE 
IX    JACOB  IN  CORNWALL 135 

BOOK   IV 
THE  COLLABORATORS 

X    ARRIVAL 177 

XI    GREAT  ARGUMENT 193 

XII    ABOUT  IT  AND  ABOUT  ....  222 


CONTENTS 


BOOK  V 

ACHIEVEMENT 

CHAPTER  pAGE 

XIII  VARIOUS  ENCOUNTERS 263 

XIV  "JOHN  TRISTRAM" 295 

XV    MRS.  PARMENTER 318 

XVI    THE  NEOPHYTE 336 

XVII    REINSTATEMENT 353 

XVIII    RECOGNITION 376 

XIX    THE  INVISIBLE  EVENT 389 

XX    THE  BEGINNING  OF  LIFE 398 

ENVOY:  THE  RENEWAL  OF  EFFORT 404 


BOOK  I 
TWO    DAYS 


THE   INVISIBLE  EVENT 


i 

MORNING 


IT  won't  be  for  long." 
Last  night  that  little  colloquial  sentence  had  seemed  a 
message  of  hope.  All  the  vacillations,  doubts,  anxieties  of 
the  preceding  weeks  had  been  dissipated.  When  he  had 
come  back  after  that  long  day's  absence  which  had  so  har- 
assed and  perplexed  her — she  had  not  been  able  to  drive 
away  the  doubts  and  fear  of  calamity  after  their  misunder- 
standing of  the  night  before — he  had  come  back  strangely 
resolute  and  determined,  and  she  had  been  utterly  relieved. 
Her  nerves  had  been  on  edge  for  weeks.  Not  only  his  argu- 
ment^ had  worn  out  her  patience,  but  his  whole  attitude. 
That  look  of  pain  she  had  seen  in  his  face,  the  look  which 
had  often  moved  her  to  tenderness,  had  become  a  source  of 
irritation.  She  had  doubted  its  origin.  She  had  become 
more  and  more  inclined  to  attribute  it  to  the  war  of  doubt 
that  must  be  raging  in  his  mind.  He  must  have  known  that 
his  arguments,  his  intentions,  were  more  than  questionable; 
he  must  have  known  that  he  could  not  reasonably  defend  his 
proposal. 

As  she  had  waited  and  looked  for  him  last  night  on  the 
steps  of  that  house,  she  had  longed  for  and  dreaded  the 
sight  of  him.  It  had  been  such  a  burning  day,  and,  strong 
as  she  was,  she  was  worn  out. 

She  had  never  before  felt  the  burden  of  her  household 
duties  so  distasteful  and  arduous.  Her  mind,  tortured  by 
suspense,  had  reacted  upon  her  body.  She  had  stood  there 
by  the  railings  and  trembled,  physically  overcome  and  weak 

11 


12  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

— washed  out,  as  she  expressed  it.  Even  Mrs.  Parmenter 
had  noticed  it ;  Betty  had  had  a  good  excuse  in  the  heat. 

He  would  never  guess  how  critical  the  moment  had  been. 
If  he  had  come  weak,  apologetically  pleading,  with  anxious, 
pitiful  eyes  and  sad  mouth,  she  would  have  broken  away 
from  him.  However  sorry  for  him  she  might  have  felt  in 
the  past,  she  would  have  had  no  pity  for  him  then.  That 
emotion  had  been  used  up,  she  could  no  longer  respond  to 
that  note.  If  he  had  faced  her  with  question  and  unspoken 
pleading  in  his  face,  she  would  have  been  cruel ;  she  would 
have  given  up  the  boarding-house  and  gone  home ;  she  would 
have  left  him;  she  would  never  have  seen  him  nor  written 
to  him  again. 

Instead  of  that  he  had  commanded  her.  He  had  taken  all 
responsibility  to  himself,  taken  her  acquiescence  for  granted. 
That  attitude  had  seemed  to  resolve  all  uncertainties.  It 
had  brought  relief  and  the  still  ecstasy  of  nerves  relaxed 
after  unbearable  tension,  the  perfect  pleasure  of  conscious 
freedom  from  pain.  Everything  had  been  harmonised ;  her 
way  had  appeared  so  easy  and  so  pleasant  last  night.  She 
had  accepted  destiny;  she  had  swung  into  the  right  drift. 
Surely  all  about  her  had  been  an  applauding  influence,  en- 
couraging and  upholding.  She  had  not  thought — last  night. 

This  morning.  .  .  . 

The  day  had  come.  From  her  bed  she  could  see  a  flag  of 
sunlight  flung  on  the  dirty  yellow  bricks  of  the  yard-wall. 
In  an  hour  she  must  get  up  and  set  about  that  routine  of 
housework  to  which  they  had  returned  last  night,  full  of  joy 
in  the  knowledge  that  it  would  not  be  for  long. 

She  had  waked  with  those  words  in  her  mind,  but  they 
no  longer  brought  consolation.  They  had  come  as  a  re- 
minder, cold  and  brutal.  She  was  alone,  deserted,  aware  of 
the  stillness  of  a  bare,  material  world.  That  applauding 
influence  had  done  its  work  and  left  her  terribly  alone.  She 
must  come  down  to  the  level  of  thought  again,  of  realisa- 
tion, of  ugly,  straight-faced  common  sense. 

She  had  always  prided  herself  upon  her  common  sense, 
and  it  wore  a  disgustingly  plain  aspect  this  morning. 


TWO    DAYS  13 

ii 

She  had  amazingly  promised  to  go  and  live  with  this 
man — live  with  him  as  his  wife,  although  he  had  a  wife 
living. 

She  hid  her  face  from  the  sunlight  for  a  time. 

The  incredible  thing  was  that  she  was  still  herself.  She 
had  not  changed  in  any  way.  She  was  still  Betty  Gale,  the 
daughter  of  a  Buckinghamshire  rector;  the  partner  in  a 
Montague  Place  boarding-house,  in  which  she  did  all  the 
work — the  practical  housekeeper,  the  manager  and  cook  of 
the  whole  establishment.  Mrs.  Parmenter,  her  partner,  did 
almost  nothing.  These  descriptions  of  herself  were  mere 
labels  perhaps ;  but  inside  she  was  still  the  same. 

According  to  the  poets  and  the  romancers,  Love  made  a 
great  change  in  one's  whole  being,  in  one's  outlook  on  life. 
(She  had  read  little  enough — she  had  been  too  busy — but  she 
knew  enough  for  that.)  If  that  were  true,  she  was  not  in 
love.  Apart  from  this  test  of  literature,  she  was  not  at  all 
sure  on  that  point.  She  could  find  this  morning  no  differ- 
ence in  herself,  save  a  certain  amazement  at  her  relieved 
acquiescence  on  the  previous  night.  Why  had  she  said 
"Yes,"  and  said  it  so  gladly? 

This  morning  the  thought  of  the  future  filled  her  with 
fear.  She  was  going  to  do  something  which  would  make  her 
a  social  outcast.  She  was  going  to  brand  herself  as  "a  "bad 
woman" — that  was  her  only  phrase  for  it.  And  she  had  no 
excuse  for  taking  this  fatal  step ;  she  was  precisely  the  same 
Betty  who  had  scolded  her  younger  sisters  for  carrying  on 
the  most  harmless  flirtations.  They  had  often  called  her  a 
"prude,"  said  she  was  "too  good  to  live."  She  had  never 
flirted,  not  even  with  a  curate.  She  had  always  stopped 
the  least  tendency  to  foolishness  in  a  curate — a  recognisable 
tendency  which  she  had  considered  as  an  inexplicable  failing 
in  the  unbeneficed  clergy.  Her  only  knowledge  of  them 
was  among  the  Evangelicals;  the  type  of  ascetic  High 
Churchman  was  almost  unknown  to  her. 

Worst  of  all  was  that  she  knew  nothing  about  the  man 


14  THE    INVISIBLE   EVENT 

with  whom  she  had  promised  to  run  away.  She  had  known 
him  for  just  eight  months. 

His  name  was  Jacob  Stahl,  the  name  of  a  German  Jew ; 
but  she  could  see  no  evidence  of  either  strain  in  him. 
His  dark  hair  and  blue  eyes  suggested  the  Celt.  He  had  said 
that  his  mother  was  Irish. 

How  could  she  know  that  he  was  not  unprincipled,  that 
he  would  not  tire  of  her  in  a  few  months,  and  leave  her 
to  her  own  resources?  He  had  told  her  that  he  had  been 
unfaithful  to  his  wife  while  he  was  living  with  her — unfaith- 
ful with  some  beautiful  woman  whom  he  had  known  and 
loved  before  he  married.  That  was  a  record  which  should 
make  her  hesitate,  and  how  could  she  know  that  that  was 
all?  He  might  have  kept  back  other  delinquencies;  this 
one  admission  had  been  made  by  accident. 

Nevertheless  she  trusted  him.  There  were  certain  marks 
of  intellectuality  and  tenderness  in  his  face  which  induced 
trust.  Undoubtedly  she  trusted  him,  but  if  she  were  forced 
to  make  out  a  case — to  her  sisters  Hilda  and  Violet,  for  in- 
stance— how  could  she  possibly  convince  them  that  he  was 
to  be  trusted  ?  She  knew  that  it  would  be  impossible.  The 
mere  facts  would  condemn  him  from  the  outset. 

She  gave  no  thought,  then,  to  the  fact  that  he  had  no 
money.  The  issue  upon  which  she  was  engaged  was  too 
great  for  that  consideration.  She  went  round  and  round  her 
one  tedious  circle,  until  the  freshness  of  her  morning  thought 
was  dulled,  and  once  more  it  was  a  relief  to  say:  "Well, 
I've  done  it,  anyway.  I've  promised,  and  I  mean  to  stick 
to  it." 

How  often  those  doubts  were  to  come  back,  how  often 
she  was  to  find  no  solution  but  by  an  acceptance  of  destiny ! 
Yet  at  the  beginning  she  always  wondered  whether  her  clear 
morning  thoughts  were  not  those  she  ought  to  follow.  She 
was  so  divided.  Her  instinct  told  her  .  .  .  she  was  not  clear 
what  it  told  her.  Were  her  morning  thoughts  instinctive? 
Or  was  that  longing  to  surrender  instinctive?  She  had 
always  been  too  reasonable ;  she  had  prided  herself  too  much 
upon  her  common  sense. 


TWO    DAYS  15 

in 

Unhappily  it  was  Sunday  morning  j  worse  still,  it  was  the 
day  before  the  August  Bank  Holiday.  The  house  was 
nearly  empty,  and  there  was  very  little  for  her  to  do.  She 
wanted  work  to-day;  she  wanted  not  to  think. 

She  got  up  at  half-past  seven,  put  on  a  much-worn  dress- 
ing-gown, hastily  knotted  up  her  hair  in  front  of  the  glass, 
slipped  her  feet  into  bedroom  slippers,  picked  up  sponge 
and  towel,  and  made  her  way  up  to  the  bathroom  on  the 
first  floor.  She  left  her  sponge  and  bath-towel  there,  and 
climbed  up  two  more  floors  to  wake  the  maids,  who  slept  in 
the  attics.  When  she  had  made  sure  that  they  were  get- 
ting up,  she  returned  to  the  bathroom.  She  did  not  mind 
going  about  the  house  in  a  dressing-gown  at  this  hour;  no 
one  was  ever  moving. 

While  she  was  in  the  bathroom  she  listened  for  the  two 
maids  to  come  downstairs — sometimes  they  had  to  be  called 
a  second  time.  It  was  almost  impossible  to  get  good  serv- 
ants in  a  boarding-house. 

When  she  returned  to  her  basement  bedroom,  she  dressed 
quickly,  and  apparently  spent  not  a  single  thought  on  her 
personal  appearance.  Yet,  when  her  toilet  was  completed 
by  a  dark  blue  overall,  and  she  entered  the  kitchen  to  begin 
the  serious  work  of  the  day,  she  looked  fresh  and  neat — a 
marked  contrast  to  the  two  heavy-eyed  and  tousled  maids, 
one  of  them  on  her  knees  before  the  kitchen  grate,  and  the 
other  looking  up  at  the  area  railings  through  the  kitchen 
window. 

"Olive,  will  you  do  the  steps  and  the  hall?"  said  Betty 
with  a  touch  of  asperity ;  and  the  girl  by  the  window  moved 
away,  moody  and  reluctant,  without  replying. 

There  had  been  trouble  with  Olive  a  few  days  before,  and 
she  was  under  notice.  After  the  manner  of  her  class,  she 
struck  the  mean  between  rebellion  and  servitude — the  use- 
less, unhappy  mean  that  serves  no  purpose. 

"I  wonder  if  we  could  do  without  a  second  girl  until  the 
house  fills  up  again,"  reflected  Betty,  as  she  made  her  way 


16  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

upstairs  to  sweep  and  dust  the  dining-room.  Her  partner, 
Mrs.  Parmenter,  had  promised  to  go  to  the  registry-office; 
but  she  postponed  the  visit  from  day  to  day.  She  always 
had  some  excuse,  and  she  was  over  sixty.  The  young  and 
capable  Betty  was  willing  to  make  allowances  for  her. 

As  she  ran  the  sweeper  briskly  over  the  worn  Axminster, 
she  was  entirely  absorbed  with  the  problems  of  the  moment ; 
she  was  wondering  whether  Alice,  the  second  maid,  would 
consent  to  do  the  hall  and  front  steps,  if  no  substitute  for 
Olive  could  be  found  immediately.  Those  steps  marked 
Betty's  limitation;  in  no  circumstances  would  she  consent 
to  be  seen  kneeling  in  Montague  Place. 

When  the  carpet  was  swept,  she  frowned  at  the  grate. 
Why  would  the  boarders  throw  their  cigarette-ends  and 
ashes  into  the  fireplace?  There  were  plenty  of  ash-trays. 
It  was  one  of  those  stupid  fenders  with  curly  iron-work  that 
guarded  secret  hiding-places  for  dust  and  bits.  It  had  to  be 
tilted  and  shaken;  the  hearthbrush  did  not  reach  those  re- 
cesses behind  the  overhanging  curb,  and  the  thing  was 
heavy.  Every  morning  Betty  frowned  at  the  grate. 

At  half-past  eight  the  dining-room  was  "done,"  and  she 
went  down  to  the  kitchen  to  cook  the  breakfast.  At  ten 
minutes  to  nine  Olive  was  still  pottering  about  the  hall. 
Betty  called  up  to  her  sharply,  telling  her  to  lay  the  cloth 
in  the  dining-room. 

At  five  minutes  past  nine  she  heard  the  first  boarders 
come  down.  She  paused  at  her  work  to  listen,  and  Alice 
looked  at  her  quickly  out  of  the  corner  of  her  eye. 

Olive  was  coming  down  with  the  empty  tray;  she  was 
coming  very  deliberately,  and  humming  to  herself. 

"Is  anyone  down?"  asked  Betty,  when  the  girl  at  last 
entered  the  kitchen. 

"Two  of  'em,  miss,"  replied  Olive  carelessly,  and  ex- 
changed a  sly  glance  with  Alice. 

Betty  was  leaning  over  the  gas-cooker,  boiling  out  the 
frying-pan.  "Who?"  she  asked,  without  looking  up. 

"I'm  sure,  miss,  I  didn't  think  to  notice,"  replied  Olive; 


TWO    DAYS  17 

and  this  time  she  winked  at  Alice,  who  giggled  surrepti- 
tiously. 

"Is  the  dining-room  door  shut?"  asked  Betty. 

"I'm  sure  I  couldn't  say,  miss,"  said  Olive. 

Betty  set  her  lips  together  and  made  a  little  grimace  at  the 
frying-pan,  then  she  straightened  her  back,  took  off  the 
coarse  apron,  which  had  served  as  a  protection  to  her  over- 
all, and  made  her  way  very  quietly  up  the  basement  stairs. 

The  dining-room  door  was  ajar,  and  she  crept  past  it 
almost  stealthily,  and  made  her  way  quickly  up  to  the  sec- 
ond floor.  One  of  the  bedroom-doors  was  standing  open 
wide,  and  she  looked  relieved.  She  went  in  and  set  about 
the  work  of  a  housemaid  with  the  same  brisk  decision  that 
she  had  shown  in  every  action  that  morning. 

Yet,  while  she  occupied  herself  in  making  ready  the  room 
of  the  man  to  whom  she  had  given  that  promise  last  night, 
the  cloud  of  depression,  that  had  threatened  her  since  she 
was  dressed,  grew  heavier.  She  worked,  conscious  of  a  feel- 
ing of  dread.  She  might  have  been  sentenced  by  some 
surgeon  to  undergo  a  critical  operation.  She  was  afraid. 

She  did  not  pause  in  her  work  to  examine  the  cloud  that 
hung  over  her ;  she  was  hurrying  to  finish  the  room  and  get 
away,  before  Jacob  Stahl  should  have  finished  his  breakfast 
and  return  to  the  tiny  apartment  he  used  as  a  study  by  day. 
She  did  not  want  to  see  him  until  after  the  midday  dinner. 
In  the  meantime  she  proposed  to  lose  herself  in  her  work, 
and  give  no  thought  to  the  future. 

One  thought,  however,  would  intrude  itself,  a  thought  too 
nearly  related  to  her  work  to  be  pushed  aside.  How  much 
did  the  maids  guess?  Olive  had  shown  a  marked  inclina- 
tion towards  impertinence  that  morning.  Olive  was  going, 
but,  if  she  knew  anything,  Alice  would  know  as  well.  Of 
course  they  chattered.  They  knew  everybody's  business. 
They  did  not  know,  certainly,  the  damning  fact  that  Jacob 
Stahl  was  married ;  but  it  was  bad  enough  for  them  to  see 
that  she  was  carrying  on  a  more  or  less  clandestine  flirta- 
tion with  one  of  the  boarders. 

As  she  patted  and  smoothed  the  quilt  with  deft,  rapid 


18  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

movements,  Betty  was  stirred  by  a  brief  feeling  of  irrita- 
tion. Why  had  she  been  put  into  such  an  invidious  posi- 
tion ?  He  had  no  right  to  make  love  to  her. 

Her  attentive  ear  caught  the  sound  of  a  closing  door  and 
footsteps  in  the  hall.  She  pushed  the  bed  back  against  the 
wall  with  her  knees,  looked  quickly  round  the  room,  made  a 
perfunctory  sweep  with  the  duster,  and  then,  with  an  "Oh ! 
that  will  have  to  do  for  to-day,"  she  slipped  quietly  out  of 
the  room  and  went  up  to  the  third  floor. 

On  the  upper  landing  she  waited  and  listened.  She  heard 
someone  come  upstairs  and  pause  at  the  open  door  of  the 
room  below.  He  was  waiting  for  her.  Perhaps  he  had 
heard  her  go  upstairs.  She  stood  perfectly  still,  and  heard 
the  door  closed  gently. 

She  crept  quietly  down,  afraid  lest  he  might  come  out 
again  and  look  for  her;  he  did  sometimes.  But  when  she 
was  safely  past  his  door,  a  picture  suddenly  presented  itself 
very  clearly  to  her  mind.  She  saw  the  man  behind  that 
closed  door  settling  down  to  write.  His  eyes  were  wistful 
and  longing.  She  saw  reproach  in  them.  "Why  had  she 
avoided  him?"  his  expression  said.  He  would  not  have 
kept  her  from  her  work,  and  it  was  quite  safe;  everyone 
was  in  the  dining-room. 

She  stopped  halfway  down  the  stairs  to  the  first  floor,  and 
the  vision  seemed  to  her  infinitely  pathetic.  What  wonder- 
ful power  was  hers!  By  the  most  trivial  act  she  could 
make  the  man  miserable  or  happy  for  the  whole  morning. 
A  great  yearning  to  make  him  happy  surged  through  her,  a 
feeling  that  was  in  part  recognisably  physical.  Her  breast 
seemed  to  lift  and  widen. 

She  turned  and  went  back.  At  his  door  she  waited  and 
listened.  She  heard  him  draw  a  chair  forward  to  the  table 
and  sit  down.  Then  she  knocked  very  timidly,  and  heard 
him  jump  up,  knocking  the  chair  over.  The  door  opened, 
and  he  stood  before  her  with  his  face  all  aglow. 

She  put  a  finger  to  her  lips,  leaned  forward  and  kissed 
him.  "I  can't  stay,"  she  said.  "Be  happy!"  and,  putting 
aside  his  detaining  hands,  she  ran  swiftly  downstairs. 


II 

BLOOMSBURY 


BETTY  did  not  go  up  to  dinner,  but  dined,  as  she  had 
breakfasted,  in  her  own  room.  She  disliked  the  untidi- 
ness of  such  meals,  but  she  did  not  want  to  face  Jacob 
Stahl  before  the  other  boarders  and  Mrs.  Parmenter.  After 
dinner  Mrs.  Parmenter  would  go  upstairs  and  lie  down,  and 
the  two  Germans  who  had  not  gone  away  for  the  holiday 
would  be  sure  to  go  out. 

It  was  nearly  three  o'clock  before  Betty  went  up  to  the 
drawing-room.  There  had  been  the  dinner  things  to  wash 
up,  and  Alice,  whose  turn  it  was  to  go  out,  had  been  per- 
mitted to  depart  early.  That  permission  had  marked  a 
weakness  on  Betty's  part ;  she  knew  she  was  trying  to  pro- 
pitiate Alice.  After  the  washing-up  was  accomplished, 
Betty  had  to  change  her  dress. 

She  looked  into  the  dining-room  as  she  went  by,  noted 
that  Olive  had  not  swept  up  the  crumbs  from  the  carpet, 
and  then,  after  a  final  moment  of  hesitation  outside  the 
door,  entered  the  drawing-room. 

Jacob  was  standing  by  the  mantelpiece,  looking,  she 
thought,  a  little  stern.  "Well,"  she  said,  "here  I  am— at 
last."  She  went  straight  over  to  the  sofa  and  sat  down. 

"I  thought  you  were  never  coming,"  he  said,  and  he  came 
and  sat  down  near  her,  but  not  very  near. 

"It's  Alice's  afternoon  out,"  replied  Betty,  and  looked  at 
him  questioningly,  trying  to  read  his  mood.  He  was  not 
usually  so  restrained  when  they  were  alone  together.  She 
wondered  whether  he  was  regretting  so  soon  the  responsi- 
bility he  had  assumed  last  night,  or  was  he  merely  vexed? 
Did  he  think  she  had  been  trying  to  avoid  him  ? 

19 


20  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

"I  had  to  help  Olive,  you  see,"  she  went  on  quickly. 
"She's  leaving  in  a  few  days,  and  she's  being  rather  tire- 
some." 

"Curse  Olive!"  said  Jacob.  "Was  that  why  you  didn't 
come  up  to  lunch?" 

She  nodded.  "Were  you  expecting  me  ?"  she  asked  fool- 
ishly. 

"I  hoped,"  he  said. 

She  felt  that  she  must  break  through  this  restraint  of  his. 
"Is  anything  the  matter  ?"  she  said. 

"Matter?    No!    Why?" 

"Oh,  well,  you  are  rather — funny  this  afternoon." 

He  came  a  little  nearer  and  took  her  hand.  "You  meant 
what  you  said  last  night,  dear  ?"  he  asked. 

"Of  course." 

Now  that  she  was  with  him,  she  did  not  want  to  think  of 
the  future ;  she  was  satisfied  with  the  present.  She  felt  that 
she  could  be  content  to  let  things  go  on  as  they  had  been 
going  for  the  past  eight  months,  if  only  he,  too,  would  be 
content. 

"That's  not  a  very  convincing  answer,"  he  said. 

"I  don't  know  what  else  I  can  say,"  returned  Betty. 

"It  was  the  tone  more  than  the  words,"  said  Jacob. 

"Of  course  I  meant  what  I  said,"  she  repeated. 

She  saw  a  flicker  of  doubt  cross  his  face,  but  he  went  on : 
"Will  you  come  soon  ?" 

She  fenced.    "Where  are  you  suggesting  we  should  go?" 

He  shrugged  his  shoulders.  "Does  that  matter?  I 
thought  of  Cornwall.  One  can  live  cheaply  down  there." 

"We  shall  have  to  live  very  cheaply,  shan't  we?"  said 
Betty,  and  her  tone  and  expression  suggested  a  whimsical 
doubt  as  to  whether  they  would  be  able  to  live  at  all. 

"Oh,  I  think  we  shall  have  enough,"  he  replied  with  con- 
fidence. "I've  got  nearly  a  hundred  pounds  in  the  bank, 
and  I'm  making  on  an  average  about  ten  pounds  a  month  by 
reviewing,  counting  what  I  get  by  selling  some  of  the 
books." 


TWO    DAYS  81 

"And  supposing,"  said  Betty,  "that  your  editor  didn't 
send  you  any  more  books  to  review  ?" 

"Oh,  of  course,  if  you  are  going  to  start  supposing,"  said 
Jacob,  with  a  touch  of  temper,  and  added:  "Supposing  I 
died,  for  instance.  .  .  ." 

"What  would  become  of  me?"  continued  Betty  thought- 
fully. 

"Betty !"  he  said  sharply. 

"What?"  She  looked  up  at  him  for  a  moment,  and  then 
looked  away  again.  She  could  not  meet  the  reproach  in  his 
face. 

"You  mean  that  you  want  to  get  out  of  it,"  he  said. 

That  was  what  she  had  meant,  and  she  was  quite  aware 
of  it.  "No,  no,  I  don't,  dear,"  was  her  answer ;  "only,  surely 
we  must  be  a  little  practical  about  it,  and  consider  the 
future." 

"Back  again  at  the  old  place,"  said  Jacob.  He  got  up 
quickly  from  the  sofa,  went  over  to  the  window,  and  stood 
there  with  his  back  to  the  room. 

Betty  sat  still.  The  choice  was  still  unmade  then,  she 
thought.  That  cloud  which  had  hung  over  her  all  the  morn- 
ing might  still  be  dissipated.  Already  she  was  conscious  of 
a  feeling  of  relief.  Why  should  she  not  end  everything 
now,  once  and  for  ever  ?  There  would  be  a  scene — quite  a 
short  scene,  probably — and  then  he  would  go  away  and  for- 
get her.  She  put  her  head  back  on  the  sofa-cushions  and 
shut  her  eyes. 

For  quite  five  minutes  neither  of  them  moved  or  spoke. 
The  green-veined  marble  clock  on  the  mantelpiece  let  off  a 
single  sharp  "ping."  At  that  Jacob  turned  quickly.  "Surely 
it  isn't  half-past  three  yet,"  he  said. 

"I  think  it's  fast,"  replied  Betty. 

"Must  be.    Quite  a  quarter  of  an  hour." 

"About  that,  I  think,"  she  agreed. 

Jacob  moved  out  of  the  window  and  sat  down  in  a  chair  a 
few  feet  from  the  sofa.  "Doesn't  matter  smoking  in  here 
this  afternoon?"  he  asked;  and  when  she  shook  her  head, 
he  lighted  a  cigarette. 


22  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

This  was  to  be  the  end,  was  the  thought  in  Betty's  mind. 
Perhaps  there  would  not  even  be  a  scene. 

"In  a  sense,"  began  Jacob  suddenly,  and  without  apparent 
reference  to  anything  that  had  gone  before — "in  a  sense,  I 
am  acting  a  part.  'I  am  to-day  what  yesterday  I  was,  to- 
morrow I  shall  not  be  less' — or  more.  But  in  the  right 
sense,  as  I  see  it,  I  am  merely  expressing  something  that 
was  potential  in  me  before,  which  I  had  not  had  the  cour- 
age to  express.'' 

She  looked  at  him,  wondering.  She  was  not  sure  what  he 
intended  as  yet. 

"Something  happened  to  me  yesterday,"  he  went  on.  "At 
six  o'clock  or  thereabouts  I  had  quite  determined  to  drown 
myself.  I  had  decided  the  place  and  the  method  and  all 
the  details."  He  looked  at  her  thoughtfully,  and  noted  that 
she  winced  ever  so  slightly. 

"You  can  forget  that,"  he  said  quickly.  "I  haven't  the 
least  intention  of  doing  that  now,  whatever  you  decide.  I 
had  a  moment  of  inspiration  yesterday ;  I  saw  what  was  the 
matter  with  you,  and  me,  and  all  of  us." 

"What?"  asked  Betty. 

"Cowardice,"  replied  Jacob.  "Beastly,  cringing,  sloppy 
fear !  We  are  afraid,  you  and  me  and  all  the  lot  of  us.  We 
are  afraid  of  what  people  will  say  and  think ;  we  are  afraid 
to  do  anything  that  is  not  strictly  conventional ;  we  are  afraid 
to  be  ourselves ;  and  we  are  even  afraid  of  all  sorts  of  con- 
tingencies and  eventualities  in  the  future — loss  of  work  or 
death.  I'm  not  putting  all  this  on  to  you,  dear.  I  admit 
that  I  have  been  and  still  am  afraid ;  that  I  try  to  count  up 
the  cost  and  work  it  all  out,  as  if  I  could  see  the  future  and 
understand  the  present.  Only  if  one  is  going  to  conduct  all 
one's  life  on  those  principles,  it  seems  to  me  that  it  is  best 
to  acknowledge  it.  Don't  let  us  pretend  that  we  are  being 
awfully  wise  and  reasonable  and  full  of  common  sense,  be- 
cause we  are  not.  Let's  just  admit  that  we  are  two  rotten 
cowards,  and  that  we  won't  fight  for  happiness  because  we 
are  so  beastly  afraid  of  what'll  happen  to  us  if  we  are  so 
outrageously  daring.  Let's  be  quite,  quite  honest  and  say 


TWO    DAYS  23 

that  we  are  going  to  slave  and  be  miserable,  because  we  have 
the  spirits  of  slaves,  and  are  going  to  do  what  Mrs.  Par- 
menter  and  the  rest  of  the  Parmenters  of  this  world  want 
us  to  do.  Shall  we?" 

"Oh!  but,  darling,  it  isn't  only  that,"  Betty  broke  out. 
She  had  been  listening  intently,  half  impressed;  but  she 
thought  she  saw  the  flaw  in  his  argument. 

"What  then?"  asked  Jacob  grimly. 

"If — if  you  weren't  married,"  she  stammered.  "If  it 
was  only  a  question  of  the  money,  I  wouldn't  mind,  not  for 
an  instant,  you  know  I  wouldn't.  I  would  come  to-morrow, 
only 

"Why  didn't  you  say  that  last  night?"  he  interrupted  her. 

"I  wasn't  quite  myself  last  night,"  said  Betty.  She  puck- 
ered her  forehead  and  drew  her  brows  together. 

"Meaning  to  say  that  you  want  to  take  it  all  back?"  sug- 
gested Jacob. 

"No,  not  exactly;  I  ..."  She  paused,  for  Jacob  was 
smiling.  His  face  expressed  a  genuine,  if  somewhat  wist- 
ful, amusement. 

"What?"  asked  Betty  succinctly. 

"Oh,  my  Lord !"  said  Jacob,  "it  is  awfully  difficult.  Do 
you  know  that  I  have  only  just  realised  that  I  have  been 
doing  the  old  thing  all  over  again,  only  in  a  new  way — 
arguing,  and  all  the  rest  of  it,  only  from  another  stand- 
point. Oh,  Betty,  my  dear,  it  is  hard  not  to  be  oneself." 

She  was  puzzled.    "What  do  you  mean,  dear  ?"  she  asked. 

He  was  still  smiling.  He  came  and  sat  beside  her  on  the 
sofa  and  put  his  arms  about  her.  "Why  didn't  you  tell 
me?"  he  said. 

"I  don't  understand,"  expostulated  Betty ;  but  she  leaned 
her  head  against  him  and  let  him  kiss  her. 

"That  was  all  wrong,  that  argument,"  he  said.  "That 
wasn't  part  of  the  inspiration  at  all.  I  am  going  to  do  it 
properly  now." 

"How  ?"  she  put  in. 

He  held  her  closer  still.  "Like  this,  dear,"  he  went  on. 
"We  aren't  going  to  argue  any  more.  You  are  just  coming 


24  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

away  with  me  soon;  and  you're  not  to  talk  any  more  non- 
sense about  money  and  my  dying,  and  all  the  rest  of  it. 
Leave  that  to  me.  And  it's  no  good  saying  'no,'  for  I  say 
'yes/  and  I'm  not  going  to  accept  any  excuses.  You've  got 
to  come." 

And  again  a  feeling  of  rest  and  peace  came  to  Betty. 
The  applauding  influences  were  round  about  her  once  more. 
Why  should  she  worry?  Why  should  she  not  leave  every- 
thing to  him?  He  took  all  the  responsibility.  She  was 
about  to  answer  him,  when  they  heard  soft  and  rather  slov- 
enly footsteps  descending  the  stairs. 

"Damn  it!"  said  Jacob.  "Here's  that  cursed  old  Par- 
menter !" 

They  moved  apart  quickly. 

II 

Mrs.  Parmenter  looked  into  the  room,  advancing  her  head 
round  the  door,  while  her  body  as  yet  remained  invisible. 
"Oh !"  she  ejaculated ;  "I  didn't  know  you  were  here" ;  and 
she  hesitated  a  moment  before  coming  into  the  room. 

Jacob  leaned  back  in  the  chair  to  which  he  had  escaped, 
with  a  movement  of  impatience,  and  then,  frowning,  pro- 
duced and  lighted  another  cigarette. 

"Come  in,  dear,"  said  Betty,  smiling.  "Couldn't  you  get 
to  sleep  this  afternoon?" 

Mrs.  Parmenter  lifted  her  chin  and  swallowed.  "It's  the 
heat,  I  think,"  she  remarked,  as  she  sat  down.  "I  must  say 
I  find  it  very  trying.  I  don't  remember  when  I  felt  it  more 
than  I  have  the  past  few  days."  She  drifted  into  a  stream 
of  reminiscence  concerning  her  past  experience  of  hot 
weather. 

Jacob  paid  no  attention.  He  was  wondering  whether 
Betty  had  not  been  genuinely  relieved  by  this  interruption 
of  his  pleading.  He  looked  at  her,  and  noted  that  she  was 
smiling,  gracious.  Why  could  she  not  let  this  intruding  old 
woman  see  that  she  was  not  wanted  ?  He,  on  his  part,  was 
doing  his  best.  There  were  plenty  of  other  rooms  in  which 


TWO    DAYS  25 

Mrs.  Parmenter  might  sit.  Was  it  not  because  Betty  was 
afraid?  If  she  intended  to  face  the  world,  why  should  she 
not  make  a  beginning  here,  at  once?  She  could  have  no 
deep-seated  intention,  or  why  should  she  go  out  of  her  way 
to  propitiate  Mrs.  Parmenter — to  pretend  that  she  preferred 
her  to  stay  in  the  room  ? 

The  marble  clock  chimed  four,  catching  its  breath  between 
each  stroke  as  if  it  feared  interruption  before  its  precious 
message  was  delivered. 

Mrs.  Parmenter  peered  up,  short-sightedly,  at  the  dial. 
"Four  o'clock,"  she  remarked,  apparently  anxious  to  re- 
assure the  clock  that  due  attention  had  been  given  to  its 
claim  upon  their  attention. 

Jacob  was  about  to  say  that  the  clock  was  a  quarter  of  an 
hour  fast,  but  Betty  got  up  from  the  sofa  and  remarked 
that  she  had  better  see  about  getting  the  tea,  and  it  came  to 
him  that  after  tea  they  might  get  rid  of  Mrs.  Parmenter. 

When  he  was  alone  with  the  older  woman,  it  occurred  to 
him  that  he  might  cut  the  ground  from  under  Betty's  feet  by 
making  some  announcement  of  their  intention.  "It's  only 
a  question  of  courage,"  he  said  to  himself,  and  then  there 
came  the  suggestion,  Would  it  be  fair  to  Betty?  Had  he 
the  right  to  make  any  such  announcement  without  her  per- 
mission ?  After  all,  there  were  limits  to  one's  influence  over 
another  human  being;  there  were  definite  cases  in  which 
prudence  was  necessary.  It  was  not  all  a  question  of  fear. 

As  if  in  reply  to  his  first  impulse,  Mrs.  Parmenter  gave 
him  an  opening. 

"And  aren't  you  going  to  take  any  holiday  this  year,  Mr. 
Stoll?"  she  asked.  "I'm  surprised  that  you  care  to  stay  in 
London  through  the  heat,  when  you've  nothing  to  keep 
you." 

"I  am  thinking  of  going  away  soon,"  said  Jacob. 

"You  were  saying  something  about  Cornwall  soon  after 
you  first  came,  I  remember — six  months  or  more  ago  it  must 
be  now.  Dear  me!  How  time  flies!  Perhaps  you  were 
thinking  of  going  there  ?" 

"If  I  did  go  to  Cornwall,  I  should  stay  there,"  said  Jacob 


26  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

tentatively.  He  looked  keenly  at  the  ageing  woman  before 
him  to  see  if  she  would  give  any  sign  of  comprehending  the 
thought  in  his  mind.  He  noticed,  for  the  first  time,  that  her 
lips  drew  together  mechanically  now  and  again ;  it  was  an 
incipient  form  of  the  "mouthing"  of  the  aged.  Already  she 
had  begun  to  die,  he  thought;  she  had  got  nothing  out  of 
life,  and  now  there  was  no  hope  for  her ! 

"Well,  well,  we  should  be  sorry  to  lose  you,  of  course," 
said  Mrs.  Parmenter ;  "but  I've  noticed  you've  been  looking 
a  little  peaked  lately,  and,  after  all,  health's  the  first  con- 
sideration." 

Jacob  was  startled.  This  was  a  hint  that  could  not  be 
mistaken.  He  remembered  Mrs.  Parmenter's  eagerness  to 
keep  him  on  that  occasion  six  months  ago  when  he  had  ex- 
pressed his  determination  to  leave.  She  suspected  some- 
thing, and  he  wondered  whether  she  could  possibly  have 
learned  in  some  roundabout  way  that  he  was  married. 

"Do  you  want  to  get  rid  of  me  ?"  he  asked,  with  an  air  of 
banter. 

Mrs.  Parmenter's  head  quivered  slightly,  and  again  Jacob 
thought,  "She  has  begun  to  die." 

"Not  in  that  sense,  of  course,"  she  replied  vaguely.  "Of 
course,  we  should  be  very  sorry  to  lose  you.  I  do  so  like  to 
have  literary  gentlemen  in  the  house.  .  .  ." 

"In  what  sense,  then  ?"  prompted  Jacob,  as  she  paused. 

"Well,  as  I'm  sure  you'll  understand,  Mr.  Stoll,"  said 
Mrs.  Parmenter,  and  the  signs  of  senile  decay  became  more 
marked  as  her  nervousness  increased,  "we  have  to  be  very 
careful  in  our  position.  And  though  I  feel  quite  sure — 
quite  sure — that  there's  nothing  more  than  harmless  friend- 
ship between  you  and  Miss  Gale — perfectly  harmless  friend- 
ship— and  I  should  be  the  last  person  to  object  in  any  way, 
we  have  to  think  of  people  who  are  not  perhaps  too  par- 
ticular themselves,  and  aren't  above  thinking  the  worst  of 
other  people.  There  are  the  German  young  gentlemen,  for 
instance — very  nice,  well-behaved  young  gentlemen,  I'm 
sure,  and  I've  no  complaint  to  make  against  them ;  but,  being 
foreigners,  and  used,  no  doubt,  to  different  ways  and  so  on, 


TWO   DAYS  37 

I'm  afraid  they  don't  look  at  friendship  in  quite  the  same 
light  as  you  and  I.  I  know  there's  been  talking,  and  I'm 
sure  you'll  take  a  hint  from  me  in  the  spirit  in  which  it's 
offered,  Mr.  Stoll." 

Jacob  had  grown  very  red  during  this  long  speech,  and 
once  or  twice  he  had  been  on  the  verge  of  interruption. 
Now  he  hesitated.  He  was  afraid  to  compromise  Betty  in 
any  way  without  her  consent.  If  he  said  that  they  were 
"engaged,"  Betty  might  deny  the  statement  when  she  re- 
turned with  the  tea.  Then  embarrassment  made  him  angry. 
He  was  in  a  false  position,  and  afraid  to  commit  himself  to 
the  truth. 

"What  rot !"  he  murmured. 

Mrs.  Parmenter  was  affronted.  Her  head  shook  more 
violently.  "I  don't  think  'rot' " — she  approached  the  word 
delicately,  as  if  afraid  of  contamination — "is  quite  a  nice 
word  to  use,  Mr.  Stoll,"  she  said. 

"Oh,  well,  perhaps  not.  I'm  sorry,"  returned  Jacob. 
"But  I  do  hate  all  this  leering  and  suspicion — among  the 
German  boys,  of  course — as  if  no  one  could  be  decently  civil 
to  any  woman  without  being — well,  beastly." 

Mrs.  Parmenter  sucked  in  her  lips  and  raised  her  eye- 
brows. She  was  shocked  now,  as  well  as  affronted.  Jacob 
had  put  the  thing  too  plainly  for  decency,  in  her  opinion, 
and  had  thereby  condemned  himself. 

"Well,  I'm  sure  you'll  think  it  over,  Mr.  Stoll,"  she  said 
with  dignity. 

Jacob  sighed,  got  up,  and  walked  over  to  the  window. 
He  was  trying  to  think  of  the  right,  convincing  thing  to  say, 
and  he  was  conscious  that  nothing,  however  convincing  to 
the  ordinary  individual,  could  alter  the  opinion  of  this  old 
woman,  who  had  long  passed  the  stage  when  she  could  ac- 
cept a  new  point  of  view.  Her  mind  had  become  petrified. 
Her  very  body  was  turning  to  stone,  or  ossifying,  which 
came  to  much  the  same  thing.  She  was  still  the  same  out- 
wardly, but,  in  fact,  she  was  dead,  had  been  dead  ever  since 
any  form  of  growth  had  become  impossible  for  her.  She 


28  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

should  be  labelled,  thought  Jacob  savagely,  "Here  lies  the 
mind  and  spirit  of  one  who  has  ceased  to  grow." 

Before  he  had  made  up  his  mind  how  to  reply,  he  heard 
Betty  bringing  up  the  tea. 


in 

The  air  of  constraint  and  artificiality  which  had  followed 
Mrs.  Parmenter's  coming,  was  even  more  pronounced  when 
Betty  returned.  She  was  instantly  conscious  that  her  part- 
ner and  Jacob  had  had  some  disagreement.  She  looked  at 
Jacob  suspiciously,  and  the  rather  sulky,  half -deprecating 
glance  he  returned  made  her  still  more  uneasy.  "Was  it 
possible,"  she  wondered,  "that  he  had  made  some  prema- 
ture announcement?"  Dread  seized  her.  Outwardly  she 
appeared  calm  and  practical  as  ever,  inwardly  she  was  shak- 
ing with  fear.  If  he  had  spoken  without  her  consent,  she 
would  deny  everything  he  had  said.  He  had  no  right  to 
attempt  coercion.  If  she  did  take  such  a  desperate  step  as 
this,  she  must  be  a  free  agent. 

Mrs.  Parmenter,  with  a  black-bordered  handkerchief 
spread  in  her  lap,  was  unusually*  silent ;  but  she  replied  to 
any  remarks  offered  by  Betty  at  sufficient  length  to  show 
that  she  had  no  specific  cause  of  offence  against  her  part- 
ner. There  was  an  air  of  deliberate  gentility  about  these 
conversational  efforts  of  the  older  woman;  she  appeared 
anxious  to  demonstrate  that  she  could  maintain  a  semblance 
of  decent  calm,  however  ruffled. 

At  last,  to  Jacob's  infinite  relief,  she  gathered  together  the 
corners  of  her  handkerchief  and  carefully  shook  into  the 
slop-basin  a  few  crumbs  of  rice-cake.  Then  she  rose,  and, 
turning  to  Betty,  said :  "Could  you  come  up  to  my  room  in 
a  quarter  of  an  hour,  dear?" 

"Very  well,"  returned  Betty. 

Jacob  opened  the  door,  and  Mrs.  Parmenter  acknowledged 
the  courtesy  by  a  slight  bow  as  she  passed  him. 

To  Jacob  she  appeared  as  a  dying  woman,  to  Betty  as  the 
representative  of  public  opinion. 


TWO   DAYS  29 

"What  have  you  been  saying?"  she  asked,  with  a  spurt 
of  anger,  when  Jacob  had  come  back  to  the  tea-table. 

He  shrugged  his  shoulders.  "I  said  nothing.  It  was 
she  who  said  things,"  he  returned.  "She  has  given  me 
notice." 

Betty  frowned.  "Why?  You  must  have  told  her  some- 
thing— given  her  some  hint." 

"I  didn't.     I  felt  inclined  to." 

"Oh,  but  you  mustn't!"  she  broke  out  vehemently. 
"You've  no  right  to.  I  haven't  promised." 

Jacob's  eyebrows  went  up.    "No  ?"  he  asked  bitterly. 

"I  have  said  I  will  come,  and  I  will,  of  course,"  said 
Betty ;  "but  I  never  said  when.  I  won't  be  rushed  into  it." 

Jacob  looked  at  her  and  hesitated.  How  impossible  it 
seemed  now  to  play  the  strong  man,  to  put  his  arm  round 
her  and  insist!  She  would  repulse  him  pettishly.  She 
would  know  that  he  was  playing  a  part;  he  would  know  it 
himself.  In  a  mood  of  disgust  with  his  own  weakness,  he 
sought  an  outlet  in  ill-temper. 

"Oh,  I  see!"  he  said.  "There  was  a  Jesuitical  reserva- 
tion. You  promised  the  act,  but  not  the  time ;  you  can  go  on 
putting  it  off  and  putting  it  off  till  we're  both  sick  of  each 
other,  and  then  ask  me  to  release  you  from  your  promise." 

"You  haven't  told  me  what  Mrs.  Parmenter  said,"  pre- 
varicated Betty. 

"Oh,  the  usual  rot!"  He  shrugged  his  shoulders  again. 
"She  knew,  of  course,  that  everything  was  perfectly  re- 
spectable and  genteel,  but  the  German  boys — 'gentlemen' 
she  said — had  filthy  minds,  and  were  making  horrible  in- 
sinuations, and  perhaps,  in  the  circumstances,  it  would  be 
better  if  I  went  to  live  in  the  Straits  Settlements.  I  am  not 
trying  to  quote  her  exact  words.  That  was  the  effect  of  it." 

"And  what  did  you  say?" 

"I  said  it  was  all  rot." 

"And  then?" 

"She  sniffed  as  though  the  word  was  indecent." 

"You  didn't  give  her  the  least  hint  ?" 

"Oh  no,  not  the  least.    In  the  eyes  of  Mrs.  Parmenter  and 


30  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

the  gentility  she  represents,  you  are  still  a  pattern  of  re- 
spectability. You  are  not  compromised.  You  still  have  a 
chance  to  attain  your  supreme  destiny.  You  may  still  hope, 
if  you  work  hard  enough,  to  become  even  as  Mrs.  Parmenter 
some  day." 

Betty  looked  distressed.  "You  can't  realise  my  position," 
she  said.  "You  can't  put  yourself  in  my  place." 

"I  can,"  returned  Jacob.  "I  can,  but  I  don't  want  to.  I 
know  what  is  the  right  thing  for  us  to  do.  Yes,  I  do,  I 
know.  And  I  don't  want  to  dwell  on  all  the  things  that  will 
make  me  afraid.  I  want  to  be  brave,  and  you  won't  help 
me." 

She  smiled  faintly  at  that  final  admission  of  weakness ;  it 
made  her  long  to  help  him. 

"I'm  sorry,  dear,"  she  said,  and  held  out  her  hand. 

He  came  and  sat  beside  her.  "It's  a  funny  thing,  isn't 
it,"  he  asked,  "that  at  one  moment  you  despise  me  for  my 
weakness,  and  the  next  moment  it  seems  to  be  the  only  thing 
that  appeals  to  you.  Why  is  it  ?" 

She  shook  her  head.  "I  don't  know;  it's  like  that,"  she 
said,  and  neither  of  them  could  find  any  other  explanation. 

"I  must  go  and  see  Mrs.  Parmenter,"  said  Betty  a  few 
minutes  later. 

Jacob  frowned.    "Why  ?"  he  asked. 

"You  heard  me  say  I  would,"  she  reminded  him. 

"Anyway,  there's  no  hurry." 

"Yes,  I  must  go  now.  When  I've  seen  Mrs.  Parmenter, 
I've  got  the  sweets  to  make." 

"Oh  Lord !"  ejaculated  Jacob. 

"Oh,  well,  never  mind,"  said  Betty  soothingly,  as  she 
stood  up.  "Everyone  will  be  out  to-morrow;  we  can  do 
what  we  like." 

"That's  a  promise,"  urged  Jacob. 

She  nodded. 

"Even  if  old  Parmenter  makes  a  fuss  ?" 

"You're  sure  you  haven't  said  anything?"  asked  Betty, 
suddenly  alarmed  again. 


TWO    DAYS  31 

"My  dear,  haven't  I  told  you?"  he  said,  with  a  touch  of 
irritation. 

She  smiled.  "And  hadn't  you  better  go  upstairs  and  do 
some  work?"  she  asked. 

"There's  not  much  to  do  just  now,"  he  said.  "Holidays 
and  all  that,  you  know.  There  are  very  few  books  coming 
in." 

Nevertheless,  after  Betty  had  gone,  he  went  up  to  his 
tiny  box  of  a  bedroom,  and  set  himself  to  write  a  review. 
He  was  intimidated  by  the  thought  that  something  of  his 
old  incompetence  was  returning.  It  was  true  that  he  had 
not  been  working  much  lately,  and  it  was  so  easy  to  find  an 
excuse.  And  while  it  was  also  true  that  he  had  few  books 
in  hand  for  review,  and  that  these  books  were  unimportant, 
he  realised  that  he  might  make  work  for  himself;  might 
attempt  articles,  short  stories. 

This  was  a  version  of  his  old  trouble.  He  could  do  the 
work  that  was  put  before  him,  but  he  was  seized  with  a 
feeling  of  ennui  and  incapacity  when  called  upon  for  inven- 
tion or  initiative.  He  had  struggled  against  that  weakness, 
and  once  he  had  so  far  conquered  it,  apparently,  as  to  write 
a  novel.  He  had  written  it  against  the  grain  by  an  effort 
of  will,  and  when  the  thing  was  finished,  he  knew  it  to  be 
worthless.  He  had  never  submitted  it  to  a  publisher,  and 
now  he  was  thankful  that  he  had  destroyed  the  manuscript. 
"Rotten"  was  the  only  word  he  ever  used  to  describe  that 
novel  to  himself.  That  was  his  final  and  perfectly  sincere 
criticism. 

But  when  he  had  finished  his  review,  he  still  sat,  pen  in 
hand,  looking  at  the  clean  sheets  of  foolscap  which  lay  be- 
fore him,  and  a  sudden  urgent  desire  to  write  came  to  him. 
He  had  no  plan  in  his  mind,  no  idea  whether  for  a  novel, 
an  article,  or  a  short  story.  He  only  wanted  to  put  words 
on  paper ;  what  words  he  did  not  know.  Surely  no  man  or 
woman  ever  began  a  book  with  less  regard  for  Meredith's 
advice ! 

He  got  up  and  paced  the  room — two  steps  to  the  door  and 
two  back  to  the  table.  In  his  mind  a  fierce  argument  was 


32  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

in  progress.  One  part  of  himself  was  logically  opposing 
another,  a  quite  unreasonable  part.  His  thoughts  fell  into 
dialogue,  and  the  reasonable  side  said  pettishly :  "How  can 
I  write,  you  fool,  when  I  haven't  the  least  idea  what  to  write 
about?"  "Never  mind,"  came  the  answer,  "sit  down 
and  write!"  "But  how  can  I  begin?"  still  more  peevishly 
asked  the  logical  Jacob.  "Sit  down  and  try,"  was  the  fool- 
ish response. 

"Oh,  all  right!"  said  Jacob  aloud,  still  defiant,  still  bent 
on  demonstrating  his  inability. 

He  sat  down  and  picked  up  his  pen,  and  the  action  seemed 
to  bring  that  other  side  of  him  into  command.  "Something, 
anything,"  he  murmured,  and  almost  unconsciously  began. 
This  is  what  he  wrote : 

"He  awoke  and  sat  up.  He  was  afraid  of  the  darkness. 
He  held  his  breath  and  listened.  Had  they  had  prayers? 
Were  they  all  gone  to  bed  ?  He  could  not  remember  whether 
his  mother  had  been  in  to  say  good-night  .  .  ." 

"I  haven't  the  least  idea  what  it's  all  about,"  chuckled 
Jacob,  "but  it's  a  beginning." 

He  had  a  picture  in  his  mind  of  a  little  boy  in  bed,  terri- 
fied at  the  darkness,  and,  as  he  wrote,  the  feeling  of  the 
scene  grew  upon  him ;  he  experienced ;  he  shivered  with 
dread ;  his  hands  and  feet  grew  cold. 

He  went  on  to  describe  the  sound  of  a  footstep  in  the  hall 
below,  and  he  followed  the  sound  slowly  up  the  stairs,  paus- 
ing frequently  for  some  word  to  convey  the  value  of  the 
noises  he  himself  could  hear  so  vividly  in  imagination. 

When  the  sound  of  footsteps  reached  the  door,  the  boy 
cried  out.  He  was  convinced  that  it  was  a  burglar,  and 
despite  his  terrors  he  jumped  out  of  bed  and  opened  the 
door,  only  to  discover  his  father  in  a  dressing-gown  with  a 
candle  in  his  hand. 

At  that  point  Jacob  laid  down  his  pen  and  sat  for  a  long 
time  staring  out  of  the  window.  The  urgent  desire  to  write 
had  gone,  but  in  place  of  it  had  come  a  vision  of  the  story's 
continuation.  He  saw  that  what  he  had  written  was  in 
some  sense  an  allegory,  a  parable  of  the  boy's  determination 


TWO    DAYS  33 

to  investigate  life  in  face  of  all  terrors.  And  he  saw  the 
story  of  the  boy's  future  developing  in  a  novel  without  plot 
or  climax.  Scenes  came  to  him  without  effort,  episodes  that 
related  his  hero  in  some  degree  to  the  experiences  of  Jacob's 
own  life.  But  the  figure  of  the  boy  was  not  his  own,  and  it 
was  miraculously  clear.  He  could  see  with  perfect  distinct- 
ness every  detail  of  the  boy's  face  and  expression,  and  when 
the  period  of  the  story  was  suddenly  shifted,  the  boy  ap- 
peared as  a  youth,  as  middle-aged  man,  as  an  old  man,  and 
in  each  vision  he  could  trace  a  resemblance  to  the  child  who 
sat  up  in  bed  and  was  afraid  of  the  darkness. 

"Now,  that's  a  story  I  could  write,"  thought  Jacob ;  "but 
I  suppose  no  publisher  would  look  at  it." 

Nevertheless  he  felt  extraordinarily  elated  and  happy. 
He  felt  strong  and  capable,  he  was  conscious  of  wonderful 
power. 

A  tap  at  the  door  startled  him. 

"Are  you  coming  down  to  supper?"  asked  Betty,  putting 
her  head  into  the  room. 

"Oh  yes.    Is  it  ready  ?"  he  asked. 

"All  but,"  she  said. 

"Come  in  one  minute,  dear,"  he  said  excitedly.  "I've 
got  something  to  read  to  you.  I  want  to  know  what  you 
think  of  it." 

"Is  there  time  now  ?"  she  asked. 

"Yes,  rather.  It's  only  three  pages,"  said  Jacob.  "You 
can  leave  the  door  open.  Come  and  sit  on  the  bed." 

She  hesitated  a  moment,  but  she  came  in  and  sat  down. 
He  read  his  three  pages  to  her. 

"What  do  you  think  of  it?"  he  asked  eagerly. 

"It's  awfully  real,"  she  said.  "What  happened  after- 
wards ?" 

He  made  a  gesture.  "That's  a  whole  book,"  he  explained. 
"I'll  tell  you  after  supper  if  we  get  a  chance.  But,  honestly, 
do  you  really  like  that  bit  ?" 

"I  do!  I  like  it  very  much,"  said  Betty.  "I  want  to 
hear  some  more.  Are  you  going  to  write  the  whole  book  ?" 

He  nodded  emphatically.    "It's  an  inspiration,"  he  said ; 


34  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

and  then  characteristically,  "but  I  don't  suppose  any  pub- 
lisher would  take  it." 

"Don't  be  so  silly!"  Betty  encouraged  him.  "How  can 
you  possibly  tell?  Personally,  that's  the  sort  of  writing  I 
love.  I  love  the  detail  of  it." 

"Did  it  make  you  feel  like  the  boy  felt?"  he  asked,  still 
longing  for  praise. 

"Absolutely,"  said  Betty. 

"Good!"  said  Jacob.  He  got  up  and  stood  in  front  of 
her.  "That's  the  sort  of  book  I  can  write,"  he  explained. 

"Well,  you  shall,"  she  returned. 

"I  will,  if  you'll  help  me,"  he  said. 

"How  can  /  help  you  ?"  she  asked. 

"By  doing  what  you've  done  this  evening.  You've  no 
idea  what  a  difference  it  makes — oh !  all  the  difference  in  the 
world.  With  you,  I  could  do  anything." 

Betty  looked  faintly  distressed.  "Help  me  up,"  she  said, 
and  held  out  her  hands  to  him.  « 

"I've  been  talking  to  Mrs.  Parmenter,"  she  said. 

"What  did  she  say?"  he  asked. 

"Lots  of  things.  Come  on;  supper's  all  ready.  I'll  tell 
you  afterwards,"  replied  Betty. 

The  little  room  was  growing  dark.  Outside,  the  landing 
was  darker  still.  But  when  they  had  come  out  of  Jacob's 
bedroom  and  closed  the  door  behind  them,  Betty  was  con- 
scious of  a  feeling  of  relief  and  of  safety.  Here,  in  the 
darkness  of  the  public  landing,  she  could  speak  of  things 
with  greater  freedom.  She  stopped  and  took  Jacob's  hand. 

"Do  you  really  want  me  so  much  ?"  she  whispered. 

"More  than  I  can  tell  you,"  he  replied,  and  for  a  moment 
they  stood  quite  still,  peering  at  each  other  in  the  dusk. 

"I  will  come,"  she  said  at  last. 


IV 

Her  interview  with  Mrs.  Parmenter  had  been  anything 
but  satisfactory. 


TWO    DAYS  35 

Betty  had  found  her  partner  sitting  at  the  window  with  an 
air  of  exaggerated  resignation.  Her  bony  hands  lay  placidly 
in  her  lap,  seamed  hands,  the  backs  corrugated  with  an  en- 
tangled cordage  of  hard  upstanding  veins.  At  her  thin  and 
hollowed  temples,  also,  the  veins  stood  out  as  if  they  thrust 
their  way  with  difficulty  between  the  bone  and  the  shrunken 
skin.  Her  cap  and  toupe  were  arranged  with  precision. 
Her  whole  attitude  expressed  a  dry  and  faded  dignity. 

Betty  closed  the  door  softly  behind  her  and  came  forward 
and  stood  by  the  little  table  in  the  window.  The  room 
affected  her  unpleasantly.  It  was  unlike  the  rest  of  the 
house.  This  bedroom  contained  all  the  few  mementoes  of 
Mrs.  Parmenter's  earlier  life,  typified,  in  some  sense,  by 
crocheted  lace  and  wool,  by  the  plush  of  the  photograph 
frames,  by  the  pleated  silk  behind  the  glass  of  the  tall,  nar- 
row bookcase — silk  that  appeared  brown  unless  one  un- 
folded the  pleats,  to  be  startled  by  the  original,  vivid  green 
— by  old  and  dirty  macrame  work,  by  bulging  glass  letter- 
weights  that  disclosed  magnified,  distorted  views  of 
Brighton  or  St.  Paul's  Cathedral,  by  all  the  meaningless 
ornament  and  fussy,  dusty  material  that  marked  the  middle- 
class  home  in  the  period  conveniently  dubbed  Mid-Victorian. 
It  was  all  faded  and  dry;  the  room  smelt  faintly  musty, 
the  smell  of  old,  stale  lavender. 

"Sit  down,  dear,"  said  Mrs.  Parmenter;  and  Betty  sat 
down  in  an  unsteady  chair,  with  legs  that  were  turned  to 
represent  a  string  of  welded  balls.  The  chair  was  still  black 
and  shiny,  but  the  glory  of  its  pristine  gilding  could  be  seen 
in  those  covered  retreats  which  had  escaped  polishing. 

"I  want  to  know  what  you're  going  to  do  ?"  said  Mrs.  Par- 
menter. 

"About  what?"  prevaricated  Betty. 

"Things  can't  go  on  like  this,"  returned  Mrs.  Parmenter. 
"There  ought  to  be  some  understanding.  It  isn't  only  the 
German  young  gentlemen,  there's  Mrs.  Blakey  coming  back 
Tuesday,  and  she's  shown  plainly  enough  already  what  she 
thinks  of  it,  besides  Miss  Dalkeith  and  Mr.  Franklin.  I 
don't  say  there's  anything  wrong — I'm  quite  sure  there 


36  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

isn't — but  I  feel  there  ought  to  be  some  sort  of  under- 
standing." 

"Yes,"  said  Betty. 

"If  he  hasn't  spoken  .  .  ."  continued  Mrs.  Parmenter,  but 
Betty  interrupted  her. 

"He  has,"  she  said,  and  felt  tempted  to  add  that  he  had 
spoken  of  nothing  else  for  three  months. 

"Very  well,  that  clears  the  way,"  said  Mrs.  Parmenter. 
"If,  as  you  say,  he  has  spoken  and  you've  accepted  him" — 
she  paused,  but  Betty  made  no  reply — "and  you've  accepted 
him,  the  engagement  ought  to  be  announced,  and  Mr.  Stoll 
ought  to  go  and  live  in  another  house  until  he  can  afford  to 
get  married.  He  could  come  here,  perhaps,  to  dinner  once 
a  week,  and  you  might  see  him  now  and  again  outside ;  and 
he  might  take  you  to  a  theatre  when  he  could  afford  it.  I 
understand  that  he  hasn't  any  means  to  speak  of  .  .  ." 

Betty  lost  the  drift  of  her  partner's  thin,  even  monologue. 
She  was  wondering  if  she  dare  tell  the  truth.  She  saw 
clearly  enough  the  selfishness  of  this  dry,  elderly  woman, 
knew  that  all  this  creaking,  conventional  speech  covered  a 
living  eagerness  to  retain  her  services  in  the  boarding-house. 
That  was  the  essential  from  Mrs.  Parmenter's  point  of 
view;  the  failing  creature  knew  well  enough  that  without 
the  help  of  this  active,  vital  young  woman,  the  boarding- 
house  could  not  be  kept  decent.  Betty  was  not  only  man- 
ager and  caterer,  she  was  also  cook  and  head-housemaid ; 
she  did  the  work  of  two  servants,  and  did  it  better  than  any 
two  servants  could  have  done  it.  She  was  so  keen  and  so 
practical,  she  took  such  an  interest  in  her  work,  was  so 
anxious  that  the  venture  should  succeed — and  it  was  suc- 
ceeding. 

Betty  saw  her  partner's  point  of  view  clearly  enough,  but 
she  did  not  resent  it.  She  was  sorry  for  the  older  woman. 
Mrs.  Parmenter's  life  had  not  been  a  success,  and  Betty, 
with  her  warm,  generous  impulses,  wished  to  make  the  poor 
creature's  last  days  as  happy  as  might  be.  Mrs.  Parmenter 
was  a  distant  connection  by  marriage.  She  had  married  a 
cousin  of  Betty's  mother's,  a  man  who  had  failed  in  his 


TWO    DAYS  87 

business  and  then  absconded.  No  one  knew  whether  he 
were  alive  or  dead.  He  had  eluded  pursuit.  But  most 
damning  of  all,  from  the  present  point  of  view,  Mr.  Par- 
menter  had  run  away  with  another  woman.  Betty  knew  all 
too  well  what  her  partner's  attitude  would  be  towards  un- 
faithful husbands.  And  she  herself,  when  she  was  sur- 
rounded by  this  atmosphere  of  gentility,  could  appreciate 
that  attitude.  It  did  not  appear  either  foolish  or  lifeless. 
It  agreed  with  all  she  had  been  taught,  with  all  that  she 
had  believed  until  a  few  months  ago. 

She  tapped  her  lower  teeth  with  her  thumb-nail  and  stared 
out  of  the  window. 

".  ..  .  to  say  nothing  of  your  own  future,"  her  elderly, 
worldly-wise  partner  was  saying.  "Don't  think  as  I've 
anything  to  say  against  Mr.  Stoll,  who's  a  nice,  quiet,  well- 
behaved  young  gentleman  enough,  so  far  as  I've  been  able 
to  judge,  but  I  have  my  doubts  whether  he'll  ever  be  able  to 
provide  you  with  a  home.  I  should  be  the  last  person  to 
say  anything  against  him  behind  his  back,  but" — and  her 
old  head  trembled  with  the  effort  to  suppress  her  emotion — 
"it  doesn't  seem  to  me  as  he'll  ever  do  much ;  a  little  lacka- 
daisical, I've  thought,  and  perhaps  not  too  fond  of  work,  or 
how  does  it  come  about  that  he's  so  badly  off  ?  and  I  suppose 
he  must  be  past  thirty.  I've  had  some  experience,  my 
dear,  as  you  know  well  enough,  and  when  a  young  man  has 
got  no  prospects  at  his  age,  it's  fairly  certain  as  he  never  will 
have.  .  .  ." 

Mrs.  Parmenter  was  adopting  the  worst  possible  line  of 
argument.  Age  had  dulled  her  powers  of  insight.  Betty's 
change  of  attitude,  from  that  listless  fidgeting  with  her  teeth 
to  the  slight  frown,  the  determined  set  of  the  mouth  and  the 
still  hands,  seemed  a  good  sign  to  Mrs.  Parmenter.  Her 
dull,  slow  eyes  watched  and  noted,  but  her  spirit  could  no 
longer  influence  the  inertia  of  the  failing  flesh;  she  merely 
saw,  she  could  not  comprehend.  She  thought  that  her  cause 
was  won.  She  searched  her  mind  for  the  final,  compelling 
argument. 

Betty  was  thinking  now  of  Jacob.    She  was  freed  from 


38  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

the  bonds  of  that  musty  room.  A  great  thrill  o-f  unselfish 
love  had  swept  through  her.  It  was  in  her  power  to  save 
him  from  failure.  She  knew  his  weaknesses  and  loved  him 
for  them.  It  was  hers  to  give.  She  could  help  him,  he  had 
told  her  so  a  hundred  times.  It  was  for  her  to  sacrifice  her- 
self, to  face  all  the  contempt  she  dreaded.  She  dare  not 
even  express  the  truth  to  this  poor,  incipiently  paralytic  old 
woman. 

"I  love  him,"  said  Betty  suddenly  in  the  middle  of  Mrs. 
Parmenter's  final  argument. 

The  older  woman  looked  shocked,  and  the  trembling  of 
her  head  became  so  marked  that  she  had  to  make  strange, 
stretching  movements  of  her  neck  to  hide  her  agitation. 
She  appeared  to  be  swallowing  some  obstinate,  unmasticated 
crumb. 

"Of  course,  in  that  case  .  .  ."  she  began  with  an  affecta- 
tion of  dignity. 

"Only,"  continued  Betty,  "there's — there's  a  reason  why 
we  shouldn't  be  married — just  yet." 

Panic  had  been  responsible  for  the  last  two  words.  On 
the  verge  of  full  confession,  she  had  been  overwhelmed  with 
shame.  She  could  not  dare  the  truth.  She  hid  her  face  in 
her  hands. 

"Well,  to  be  sure  there  is,"  returned  the  blind  woman  in 
the  stiff  armchair.  "You'd  hardly  get  married  on  twopence 
a  week,  I  suppose,  even  if  you  only  had  your  two  selves  to 
think  of,  and  to  bring  children  into  the  world  .  .  ." 

Betty  rose  quickly.  "There's  no  question  of  that,"  she 
said.  "But  I  don't  see  that  we  shall  do  any  good  by  talking. 
I'll  do  something.  You're  quite  right — things  can't  go  on. 
I  must  go  now.  I've  got  the  sweets  to  make  for  supper." 

She  went  out  quickly  and  ran  down  into  the  kitchen.  She 
felt  the  necessity  for  active  occupation.  She  was  always 
somewhat  impetuous  in  her  actions,  but  this  evening  she 
almost  scared  Olive  by  the  urgency  of  her  movements. 

But  when  her  sweet-making  was  accomplished,  there  was 
still  half  an  hour  to  be  lived  before  supper,  and  she  went 
into  her  gloomy,  underground  bedroom  and  tried  desper- 


TWO    DAYS  39 

ately  to  think.  Yet  she  did  not,  could  not,  think ;  she  only 
felt,  and  the  one  clear  solution  which  came  to  her  was  that 
this  war  within  herself  could  not  continue.  She  must 
choose.  She  must  decide  definitely.  If  she  adopted  one 
course  or  the  other,  she  could  be  at  peace  again.  Either 
course  would  bring  a  restful  certainty,  and  really,  at  that 
moment,  she  did  not  care  which  she  adopted,  if  only  the 
whole  affair  could  be  settled  for  ever. 

She  went  up  to  Jacob's  bedroom  at  a  quarter  past  eight, 
intending  to  break  her  promise  of  the  night  before,  to  tell 
him  he  must  go  away  and  never  see  her  again. 

On  the  stairs  she  changed  her  mind,  and  decided  to  put  off 
decision  until  the  next  morning. 

And  then  she  had  found  him,  full  of  enthusiasm ;  his  face 
alight  with  the  glow  of  success.  She  had  listened  to  his 
work,  and  she  had  believed  in  it  and  in  him.  He  would  do 
great  things  with  her  to  help  him,  she  had  thought.  His 
little  room  was  throbbing  with  the  promise  of  achieve- 
ment. . 


"I  will  come,"  she  said  in  the  darkness  of  the  landing. 

He  put  his  arms  round  her  and  held  her  tightly. 

"With  you,  darling,"  he  whispered,  "anything,  everything 
is  possible." 

"But  I  must  go  home  first.  Just  for  one  day  to  see  my 
father  and  my  sisters,"  she  said. 

"They  won't  influence  you?" 

"No— oh  no." 

"Shall  you  tell  them  everything?" 

"I  don't  know.    Perhaps." 

They  were  so  near  together,  their  faces  touching,  that 
they  whispered  their  brief  interchanges  of  question  and 
answer  into  each  other's  ears.  But  her  final  whisper  was 
so  soft,  that,  even  so,  he  could  hardly  hear  her. 

"There  can't  .  .  .  there  won't  be  ...  anyone  but  us, 
ever,  I  mean,  unless  we  could  be  properly  married  ?" 

He  was  ready  to  promise  her  anything  she  wished. 


Ill 

BEECHCOMBE 


THE  train  had  been  very  full,  and  even  the  orderly 
crowd  which  had  been  going  to  spend  its  day  in  the 
space  and  sunlight  of  the  Chiltern  Hills  had  shown  its  con- 
sciousness that  this  was  the  August  Bank  Holiday.  There 
had  been  an  air  of  anticipation  and  eagerness  about  them  all, 
and  their  excitement  had  for  the  moment  partly  dominated 
their  natural  middle-class  reserve.  Even  the  two  middle- 
aged  young  women  who  had  at  first  attempted  an  appear- 
ance of  detachment,  had  begun  to  talk  to  the  other  occupants 
of  the  compartment  before  they  reached  Chorley  Wood. 
Everyone  had  essayed  some  embroidery  of  the  satisfactory 
and  conclusive  statement  that  it  was  "perfect  weather," 
and,  failing  to  improve  the  effect  by  mere  phrase,  had  fallen 
back  upon  presenting  the  contrast  of  earlier  bank  holidays 
they  had  known.  Sometimes  they  so  far  lost  themselves  in 
reminiscence  as  to  lose  momentarily  their  sense  of  present 
enjoyment  until  recalled  by  a  young  man  in  the  corner,  who 
invariably  wound  up  every  such  retrospect  by  saying  cheer- 
fully: "Well,  it's  all  right  to-day,  anyhow."  Betty  had 
tried  in  vain  to  forget  herself  in  this  jolly  atmosphere  of 
pleased  expectation.  She  felt  miserably  alone  and  apart 
from  the  happy  crowd.  She  could  not  forget  the  cloud 
which  hung  over  her,  the  dread  of  the  future,  the  knowl- 
edge that  she  was  purposing  to  do  something  which,  as  she 
phrased  it,  would  cut  her  off  for  ever  from  all  decent 
people. 

Now  that  she  was  away  from  Jacob,  she  saw  the  problem 
so  clearly  from  the  old  point  of  view.  She  had  always  been 
taught  to  renounce  the  lusts  of  the  flesh,  and  however  re- 

40 


TWO    DAYS  41 

mote  was  the  clear  purpose  of  her  mind  from  any  concep- 
tion of  lust,  she  saw  but  this  one  antithesis.  That  was  the 
alternative  which  every  relation  or  friend  she  had  ever  had 
would  set  up  as  the  indisputable  test.  It  was  a  choice  be- 
tween becoming  the  mistress  of  a  married  man  and  continu- 
ing the  struggle  of  her  ordinary  life.  They  would  tell  her 
that  she  must  "renounce,"  and  no  words  of  hers  could  ever 
make  plain  to  them  that  to  do  what  they  would  call  the  im- 
moral thing  needed  the  greater  courage,  was  the  greater  act 
of  renunciation.  That  was  a  perfectly  clear  issue  she  could 
never  make  these  relations  of  hers  understand,  and  it  seemed 
to  her  that  surely  the  mass  of  opinion  must  be  right,  and 
that  all  Jacob's  argument  must  be  one  elusive  sophistry — 
Jesuitical  was  her  only  word  for  it — but  her  intention  was 
the  same.  Jacob  had  his  own  purpose  to  serve ;  her  father 
and  sisters  would  be  comparatively  detached  in  giving  their 
advice.  Nevertheless,  she  did  not  esteem  Jacob's  purpose  as 
any  less  worthy  than  her  own.  He  loved  her,  and  she  did 
not  doubt  the  quality  of  his  love. 

And  that  one  warm  thought  brought  the  only  glow  of 
comfort  and  happiness  which  upheld  her  in  her  distress — 
she  was  loved  for  the  first  time  in  her  life,  and  the  fact  had 
altered  her  relations  even  to  the  commonplace  circumstances 
of  existence.  To-day  she  had  not  been  offended  by  the 
mute  admiration  of  the  unattached  optimist  who  had  re- 
turned so  persistently  to  his  reminder  of  present  serenity. 
His  surreptitious  glances  had  been  a  cause  of  interest, 
whereas  six  months  ago  they  would  have  seemed  to  her 
offensive.  She  was  newly  awake  to  an  aspect  of  life  she  had 
never  before  understood.  She  saw  how  universal  and  im- 
mensely important  was  this  strange  stimulus  which  she  had 
so  persistently  misread. 

As  she  walked  slowly  up  the  long  steep  hill  from  the 
station,  she  felt  that  she  was  not  the  same  person  who  had 
so  often  traversed  that  familiar  road.  She  remembered 
how  she  had  first  been  brought  to  see  the  wonder  of  the 
new  station  at  Great  Missenden,  and  had  been  slightly  in- 
timidated by  her  sight  of  the  enormous,  noisy  train.  But 


42  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

that  childish  figure  with  the  loose  mane  of  fair  hair  was 
less  remote  from  her  present  self  than  her  vision  of  the 
sedate  young  woman  returning  to  Bloomsbury  just  a  year 
ago,  the  Betty  who  had  reproved  her  younger  sister  for 
"larking"  with  the  curate.  She  had  said  it  was  not  "nice," 
and  at  Hilda's  retort  had  warmed  to  the  insult  that  it  was 
"so  common." 

Yet  here  was  this  same  Betty  secretly  unashamed  of  the 
knowledge  that  she  was  wooed  by  a  man  who  had  a  wife 
living,  a  Betty  who  had  been  interested  in  the  bashful  ad- 
miration of  a  young  bank-holiday  clerk. 

Even  when  she  had  reached  the  plateau,  and  was  making 
her  way  along  the  dull  straight  mile  of  straggling  village, 
subject  to  constant  recognition  by  her  father's  parishioners, 
some  of  whom  complimented  her  on  her  appearance  and  la- 
mented that  she  never  came  to  see  them  now,  even  then,  in 
the  midst  of  the  familiar  associations  which  had  made  up 
the  greater  part  of  her  life,  she  was  intensely  conscious  of 
the  new,  strange  spirit  within  her.  "If  you  only  knew," 
she  thought,  "I  wonder  whether  you  would  care  to  speak  to 
me  at  all."  In  imagination  she  saw  the  leers  and  winks 
which  would  be  exchanged  after  her  back  was  turned ;  she 
heard  the  gossip :  "She's  no  better  than  she  should  be." 

ii 

When  she  reached  the  Rectory  gate,  the  sound  of  voices 
came  to  her  from  the  lawn,  and  she  stopped  and  listened, 
hidden  from  the  speakers  by  the  thick  shrubbery  of  laurel 
which  shielded  the  garden  from  the  drive. 

The  voices  were  those  of  her  two  sisters.  They  were 
playing  tennis,  not  very  seriously,  if  Betty  could  judge  by 
the  comments  they  made  on  each  other's  play,  but  evidently 
with  considerable  animation.  "Oh,  Violet,  you  booby,  fancy 
missing  that!"  she  heard;  and  the  reply:  "Well,  it's  too 
hot  to  run.  Go  on ;  that's  thirty-all,  isn't  it  ?  You're  in  the 
wrong  court,  duffer !" 

They  had  always  been  different  from  her,  those  two,  less 


TWO    DAYS  43 

serious,  less  practical.  She  had  always  had  some  sense  of 
superiority;  she  had  been  something  more  than  an  elder 
sister,  her  attitude  towards  them  had  been  that  of  an  older 
generation.  She  was  only  separated  from  Violet  by  three 
years,  and  from  Hilda  by  five,  but  they  had  seemed  to  re- 
gard her  as  belonging  to  another  set  of  interests.  They  had 
combined  against  her,  like  children  with  common  delights 
of  which  she  knew  nothing. 

But  never  had  she  felt  so  apart  from  them  as  now.  Al- 
ready she  was  cut  off  by  interests  so  divergent  that  she  felt 
like  a  stranger  in  this,  the  only  home  she  had  ever  known. 
She  was  aware  of  a  feeling  of  shyness,  as  if  she  intruded 
her  presence  on  a  strange  family. 

She  drew  herself  up  and  walked  quickly  through  the  wire 
arch  that  gave  access  to  the  lawn. 

"Hallo,  you  two!"  was  her  greeting. 

"Good  Heavens !  It's  Betty !"  exclaimed  Violet.  "Where 
on  earth  did  you  spring  from  ?  Got  a  holiday  ?" 

And  Hilda,  on  the  far  side  of  the  net,  opened  her  eyes  to 
their  widest,  feigning  extravagant  and  gawky  surprise. 

Their  kisses  were  the  most  perfunctory  acknowledgment 
of  sisterhood,  and  when  the  three  had  sat  down  on  the  old 
garden-seat  under  the  elms,  their  inquiries  into  Betty's  news 
and  her  reasons  for  this  unexpected  visit  displayed  a  lack 
of  interest,  that  they  made  little  attempt  to  disguise. 

It  was  plain  at  once  that  they  were  bursting  with  some 
secret  of  their  own.  They  exchanged  glances,  giggled,  and 
Hilda  constantly  entreated  Violet  to  "shut  up !"  although  her 
tone  and  manner  showed  the  delight  she  took  in  this,  to 
Betty,  meaningless  badinage. 

"Oh,  come  on,"  said  Betty  at  last,  "do  tell  me  what  you're 
giggling  about  ?" 

"Ask  the  kid,"  responded  Violet. 

"Look  here,  Vi,  you'll  have  to  drop  calling  me  'the  kid' 
now,"  said  Hilda,  and  smacked  at  her  sister's  foot  with  the 
tennis-racquet  she  was  still  holding. 

"The  kid's  grown  up  now,"  explained  Violet. 


44  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

"Oh,  shut  up,  old  girl !"  put  in  Hilda ;  "you  needn't  make 
a  joke  of  it."  Her  tone  was  suddenly  more  serious. 

"I  wasn't  making  a  joke  of  it,  touchy,"  returned  Violet. 
"Tell  her  yourself." 

"Oh,  I  can't !"  said  Hilda,  blushing  furiously. 

"Well,  do  one  of  you  tell  me,"  urged  Betty.  "She  hasn't 
got  engaged,  has  she  ?" 

Violet  nodded  vehemently,  and  Hilda  began  to  take  an 
enormous  interest  in  patting  the  gravel  with  her  racquet. 

"Who  to?"  asked  Betty. 

"Mr.  Phelps.    We  call  him  Frank  now,"  said  Violet. 

"But  .  .  ."  began  Betty. 

"He's  got  a  living  in  Worcestershire,"  said  Violet,  antici- 
pating her  sister's  objection.  "Last  week." 

"Well,  I  think  you  might  have  written  to  me,"  expostu- 
lated Betty ;  and,  turning  to  Hilda,  she  put  an  arm  round  her 
shoulders  and  said:  "I'm  awfully  glad,  old  girl!" 

"Thanks,  dear,  it  is  rather  ripping,"  replied  Hilda,  with- 
out looking  up  from  her  work  on  the  path. 

"We  haven't  had  time  to  write,"  explained  Violet.  "It 
only  happened  last  night.  After  supper.  They  went  out  to 
look  at  the  moon  or  something,  and  then  Frank  came  back 
looking  as  if  he'd  just  come  down  from  Mount  Sinai  .  .  ." 

"Oh,  shut  up,  Vi !"  interpolated  Hilda. 

"And  after  prayers  he  told  father  that  he  and  Hilda  were 
engaged,  and  was  father  prepared  to  give  them  his  bless- 


ing 


'When  is  it  going  to  be?"  asked  Betty. 

"I  don't  know,"  said  Hilda,  still  intent  on  spoiling  her 
racquet.  "Ages  yet,  I  expect." 

"What  bosh !"  said  Violet.  "It  is  going  to  be  pretty  soon. 
Frank's  going  to  be  inducted  in  September,  and  he  told 
father  that  he  doesn't  see  any  reason  why  it  shouldn't  be  in 
October.  Hilda's  twenty-one.  It'll  be  jolly  rotten  for  me 
after  she's  gone,"  Violet  went  on.  "Father's  been  talking 
this  morning  about  your  coming  back,  Betty.  Funny  your 
turning  up  like  this.  I  don't  know  whether  he  really  meant 
it,  though.  Aunt  Mary's  here.  She  came  down  for  the 


TWO    DAYS  45 

holidays,  and  perhaps  she'll  come  for  good."  Violet's  tone 
did  not  indicate  which  of  the  two  evils  she  would  dislike 
more — the  return  of  her  sister  or  the  permanent  residence 
of  Aunt  Mary. 

Betty  drew  her  own  inferences,  and  determined  that  noth- 
ing should  ever  induce  her  to  return  to  the  Rectory  as 
housekeeper  and  chaperone;  but  she  avoided  any  comment 
on  that  issue  by  asking : 

"Will  Mr.  Phelps  be  here  to  lunch?" 

"No,  he's  gone  down  to  see  his  own  people  and  spread 
the  glad  tidings,"  said  Violet. 

"Oh,  come  on !"  said  Hilda,  getting  to  her  feet.  "Aren't 
you  going  in  to  see  father,  Bet  ?  He's  in  his  study,  I  ex- 
pect." 

"All  right,"  said  Betty.  "Go  and  tell  him  I'm  here.  I'll 
come  directly.  I've  hardly  got  cool  yet  after  that  walk  from 
the  station." 

"We'd  have  met  you  if  you'd  let  us  know,"  said  Violet. 

"I  didn't  know  myself  till  this  morning,"  replied  Betty. 
"I  didn't  want  to  wire.  A  two-mile  walk  won't  kill  me." 

She  watched  her  two  sisters  move  away  across  the  lawn 
locked  in  a  school-girl  embrace.  They  were  curiously 
young,  she  thought.  Hilda  was  not  unlike  herself  in  ap- 
pearance, fair  and  blue-eyed,  but  Hilda  was  taller  and 
slighter.  Violet,  dark  and  noticeably  thin,  was  unlike 
either  of  them. 

When  they  had  passed  out  of  sight  round  the  corner  of 
the  house,  Betty's  thoughts  turned  to  the  contemplation  of 
the  coming  interview  with  her  father.  Dare  she  tell  him, 
she  wondered,  and  then,  ought  she  to  tell  him  ?  There  was 
Hilda  to  be  considered,  and  Violet,  her  father,  Aunt  Mary, 
the  family  generally,  and,  incidentally,  Mr.  Phelps.  (Betty 
remembered  him  as  a  rather  commonplace  young  man,  with 
a  thick,  fair  moustache,  whose  chief  characteristics  were  a 
conscientious  interest  in  the  parish  and  a  passion  for  fish- 
ing.) How  could  she  spring  a  terrible  scandal  on  this  com- 
posed, convinced  group  of  people?  They  had  only  one 
standard  of  propriety  and  ethics,  and  it  was  her  own  stand- 


46  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

ard.  She  recalled  the  last  serious  interview  she  had  had 
with  her  father,  when  she  had  faced  him  in  his  study  and 
declared  her  intention  of  earning  her  own  living.  He  had 
been  shocked  then.  Her  intention  had  evidently  appeared 
to  him  as  not  quite  "seemly" — his  own  word,  to  which  he 
had  reverted  more  than  once  in  the  course  of  their  argu- 
ment. He  had  confessed  that  he  was  unable  to  see  his 
daughter's  point  of  view. 

But  on  that  occasion  she  had  had  sound  and  convincing 
reasons  to  adduce  for  her  proposal.  The  economic  point 
was  too  good  to  be  passed  by.  "I  don't  suppose  I  shall  ever 
marry,"  she  had  said ;  "I  don't  think  I'm  that  sort,  and  I 
feel  I  ought  to  begin  to  do  something  now  .  .  ."  She  had 
hesitated  to  make  a  complete  statement,  but  her  father  had 
understood. 

"Of  course,  of  course,"  he  had  said,  "I  quite  see  your 
point,  my  dear  girl.  If  anything  happens  to  me,  as  it  in- 
evitably will  in  God's  good  time,  it  may  become  necessary 
for  you  to  support  yourself — but  .  .  ."  He  had  hesitated, 
and  looked  past  Betty  at  the  bookcase  with  a  certain  wrin- 
kling of  the  forehead  she  knew  so  well.  "But  Mrs.  Parmen- 
ter — a  dear,  good  creature,  of  course,  and  very  worthy — 
her  husband,  I'm  afraid,  was  a  blackguard — still  she's  not 
— er — quite  one  of  us,  you  know,  my  dear,  and  ...  do  you 
really  think  a  boarding-house,  eh?" 

"It's  a  chance,"  Betty  had  replied  stubbornly,  without 
touching  on  the  subsidiary  question,  "and  chances  aren't 
easy  to  find." 

He  had  given  in  on  that  occasion,  but  she  could  not  doubt 
that  he  had  clearly  recognised  his  own  interests.  Betty's 
departure  would  reduce  household  expenses.  And  his  final 
display  of  temper  was,  almost  certainly,  a  mark  of  his  weak- 
ness. He  had  been  angry  with  her  for  putting  the  tempta- 
tion to  selfishness  before  him. 

There  had  been  an  excuse  for  her  then ;  there  was  none 
now.  And  would  not  Jacob  Stahl,  from  her  description  of 
him,  most  surely  rank  with  Mrs.  Parmenter  as  "not — er — 
quite  one  of  us,  you  know"  ? 


TWO    DAYS  47 

Betty  grew  suddenly  warm  at  the  thought  of  that  expres- 
sion. If  it  came  to  a  championship  of  Jacob,  she  would  be 
quite  equal  to  the  occasion. 

"I  am  a  coward,"  she  reflected.  "I  don't  believe  I  can 
ever  face  telling  them."  It  was  certainly  a  consolation  to 
feel  that  duty  and  inclination  coincided.  "In  any  case,  I 
can't  say  anything  about  it  until  Hilda  is  married,"  was  her 
final  decision,  and  she  got  up  from  the  seat  with  a  very  real 
sense  of  relief. 

After  that  decision  the  interview  had  no  longer  any  ter- 
rors for  her,  but  as  she  walked  towards  the  house,  Hilda 
and  Violet  returned  to  say  that  their  father  and  Aunt  Mary 
had  gone  out  into  the  parish,  so  she  resumed  her  seat  and 
watched  her  two  sisters  finish  their  interrupted  set. 


in 

Her  father's  greeting  was  warmer  than  she  had  antici- 
pated, and  his  grievance  that  she  had  not  been  down  to  see 
them  for  so  long  wore  an  aspect  of  paternal  tenderness. 
Aunt  Mary  was  quite  effusive,  but  that  was  to  be  expected. 
She  was  a  warm-hearted,  generous  little  woman,  and  lived 
her  religion  with  a  sincerity  that  was  often  embarrassing. 

The  old  familiar  influences  were  taking  hold  of  Betty, 
drawing  her  back  to  the  comfort  and  serenity  of  this  coun- 
try Rectory.  The  dining-room  had  a  certain  solid  dignity 
of  its  own,  despite  the  shabbiness  of  some  of  the  furniture, 
and  there  was  a  feeling  of  assurance,  of  position,  in  the 
whole  air  of  the  place,  which  strongly  appealed  to  her  after 
twelve  months  in  a  Bloomsbury  boarding-house.  She  found 
herself  wondering,  in  face  of  her  recent  determination, 
whether  it  would  not  be  possible  for  her  to  return  and  live 
the  old  life  again  ?  Without  question  that  would  be  the  line 
of  least  resistance. 

The  contrast  between  her  two  lives  was  brought  home  to 
her  by  Aunt  Mary's  persistent  inquiries  about  the  house  in 
Montague  Place. 

"Do  you  have  family  prayers,  dear  ?"  the  good  lady  asked. 


48  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

"I  do  think  it  is  so  essential  that  we  should  unite  in  common 
worship  at  least  once  every  day." 

Betty  thought  of  the  "German  young  gentlemen,"  of  Mrs. 
Blakey,  and  her  agnostic  lover,  Jacob,  uniting  in  common 
worship,  and  that  incredible  idea  made  her  smile ;  but  she 
could  not  refrain  from  asking  herself  why  it  should  be  so 
absurd.  She  believed,  theoretically,  in  the  truth  of  her 
aunt's  standard.  Why  did  she  not  practise  her  beliefs  ? 

"I'm  afraid  we  don't,  aunt,"  was  all  the  answer  she  could 
find. 

Aunt  Mary  looked  grieved.  "There  is  a  terrible  tendency 
towards  carelessness  in  these  days,"  she  said.  "It  is  so  sad. 
The  spirit  of  Anti-Christ  is  spreading  everywhere,  one  of 
the  signs  of  the  last  days,  as  we  are  told." 

"It's  a  little  difficult,  no  doubt,  in  a  boarding-house, 
Mary,"  the  Rector  suggested.  "Irregularity  of  times,  I  ex- 
pect, and  so  forth.  Young  men  hurrying  off  to  business,  in 
the  morning,  eh,  Betty  ?  and — er — perhaps  some  differences 
of  creed,  no  doubt,  among  your  boarders  ?" 

"Oh  yes,  of  course,  father,"  answered  Betty,  glad  of  an 
escape. 

Mrs.  Lynneker  shook  her  head.  "You've  no  Roman 
Catholics,  I  hope,  dear?"  she  asked. 

"Oh  no— at  least  I  don't  think  so,"  replied  Betty. 

"I  hope  you  will  set  your  face  against  that,  dear,"  said 
her  aunt  earnestly,  with  a  note  of  reproof,  which  implied 
that  her  niece  ought  surely  to  know  whether  she  harboured 
such  dangerous  guests ;  and  Betty  tried  to  picture  herself  in- 
quiring into  the  tenets  of  possible  boarders.  That  Blooms- 
bury  house  was  so  impossibly  far  away,  and  the  Betty  who 
worked  there  seemed  to  be  quite  another  person  to  the 
Betty  in  the  Rectory  dining-room. 

Mr.  Gale  saved  further  embarrassments  by  turning  the 
conversation  to  the  subject  of  the  Great  Central  Railway. 
He  announced  that  work  was  already  beginning  at  the  Lon- 
don terminus,  and  that  the  line  was  to  pass  under  Lord's 
Cricket  Ground. 

"It  will  probably  make  a  great  difference  to  us  down 


TWO    DAYS  49 

here,"  he  said.  "The  Metropolitan  has  changed  the  country 
a  great  deal.  When  we  first  came  here  our  nearest  station 
was  High  Wycombe,  and  Beechcombe  was  buried  in  the 
heart  of  the  Chilterns.  A  great  pity  in  some  ways  that  the 
country  should  be  lost  to  us.  London  is  a  terrible  monster, 
always  hungry  for  more  land.  I  suppose  you  noticed,  Betty, 
the  new  houses  that  are  going  up  in  the  village?  We  are 
becoming  terribly  urbanized.  A  great  pity,  in  my  opinion." 

"I  don't  think  I  noticed  the  houses,  father,"  said  Betty; 
but  she  did  notice,  in  her  practical  way,  many  defects  in  the 
conduct  of  the  Rectory  menage,  particularly  in  the  cooking 
and  serving  of  the  lunch.  She  made  no  comment,  but  she 
looked  once  or  twice  at  Violet,  who  seemed  to  avoid  her 
sister's  glance. 

"I'd  soon  alter  that,  if  I  came  back,"  was  Betty's  unspoken 
thought,  with  reference  to  household  management. 

And  after  lunch,  when  her  father  took  Betty  off  by  her- 
self to  the  far  end  of  the  garden,  he  made  it  quite  clear  to 
her  that  he  also  appreciated  the  difference  in  the  conduct  of 
his  household. 

"And  is  this  boarding-house  a  success,  eh,  dear?"  he 
asked. 

"Well,  I  don't  know  that  we  are  making  much  money 
yet,"  replied  Betty.  "We  were  rather  empty  in  the  early 
spring,  and  we  have  not  been  very  full  since  the  Jubilee. 
But  people  will  be  coming  back  soon.  Oh  yes,  I  think  it  will 
be  a  success." 

"Ah !"  Mr.  Gale  gave  full  value  to  his  exclamations ; 
they  were  sonorous,  and  slightly  prolonged.  "Did  the  girls 
say  anything  to  you  about  coming  back  here  after  Hilda's 
marriage?  A  good  fellow,  Phelps,  by  the  way.  Not  bril- 
liant, perhaps,  but  a  thoroughly  good  fellow." 

"They  did  mention  it,"  said  Betty,  keeping  to  the  main 
issue. 

"I  need  hardly  say,  of  course,"  said  her  father,  "how  glad 
I  should  be  if  you  saw  your  way  to  return,  my  dear.  Violet 
does  her  best,  but  she  lacks  that  splendid  quality  of  thor- 
oughness that  my  little  Betty  displays  so  markedly.  You're 


50  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

a  wonderful  little  housekeeper,  my  dear;  I'm  sure  if  anyone 
could  make  a  boarding-house  a  success  .  .  .  Well,  well,  I 
hope  you'll  think  it  over.  Your  aunt  has  offered  to  come,  if 
necessary,  although  I  know  she  prefers  Bournemouth.  She 
finds  our  air  a  little  too  strong  for  her,  I  fancy.  And  I  may 
tell  you  that  she,  too,  is  a  little  against  your  remaining  on  in 
Bloomsbury  indefinitely.  She  has  told  me  that  neither  you 
nor  Violet  need  have  any — er — fears  for  the  future,  so  you 
need  not  let  those  practical  considerations  stand  in  your  way 
any  longer.  Such  a  very  practical  little  woman  is  my  dear 
Betty,  eh?" 

"I  don't  think  I  could  leave  Mrs.  Parmenter  just  yet," 
faltered  Betty.  Her  father  was  making  it  very  difficult  for 
her.  She  had  always  had  a  great  respect  for  him,  but  there 
was  some  quality  of  insincerity  in  the  man  that  had  stood 
between  them.  Betty  liked  and  admired  her  father,  but  she 
had  never  been  able  to  love  him.  She  was  conscious  at  this 
moment  that  a  certain  selfishness  underlay  his  anxiety  for 
her  return. 

"She's  not  quite  capable,  perhaps,  in  your  opinion,  of  con- 
ducting the  house  alone,  eh?"  asked  Mr.  Gale. 

"She's  getting  very  old,"  replied  Betty. 

"Dear,  dear,  yes;  I  suppose  she  must  be.  Let  me 
see  .  .  ." 

"Oh,  she's  not  much  over  sixty,"  interposed  Betty;  "but 
she's  had  rather  a  terrible  life,  hasn't  she?" 

"Yes,  yes,  of  course,"  said  Mr.  Gale.  "Terrible  fellow, 
George  Parmenter ;  a  blackguard,  I'm  sorely  afraid." 

"And,  in  any  case,  I  must  find  her  another  partner.  It 
would  only  be  fair,  wouldn't  it  ?"  asked  Betty,  inspired  to  a 
line  of  defence  which  was  greatly  to  influence  her  immedi- 
ate future. 

"I  suppose  one  could  advertise?"  suggested  her  father. 
"One  seems  able  to  do  anything  by  advertisement  in  these 
days." 

"I  suppose  so,"  agreed  Betty. 

"Well,  well,  the  wedding  won't  be  until  the  end  of  Oc- 
tober," said  Mr.  Gale.  "That  gives  you  three  months,  my 


TWO    DAYS  51 

dear.  I  do  not  wish  to  influence  you  unduly,  and  I  have  a 
great  admiration,  a  very  great  admiration,  for  your  courage 
in  embarking  on  this  venture  at  all.  Still,  if  you  can  see 
your  way.  .  .  .  Your  father  would  be  very  glad  to  have  his 
practical  little  woman  home  again,  I  assure  you." 

He  laid  his  hand  caressingly  on  her  shoulder,  but  Betty 
did  not  look  up.  .  .  . 

Afterwards  Aunt  Mary  questioned  Betty  very  closely  with 
regard  to  her  Sunday  observances.  What  church  did  she  go 
to?  Did  she  attend  Communion  regularly?  Aunt  Mary 
was  far  more  evangelical  than  her  brother,  who  always  de- 
scribed himself  vaguely  as  a  Broad  Churchman. 

Betty's  answers  to  this  searching  examination  were  not 
altogether  satisfactory,  and  she  was  ashamed  to  realise  how 
far  she  had  neglected  her  church-going.  She  went  now  and 
again  to  Evensong  in  Hart  Street,  but  with  those  exceptions 
she  had  hardly  been  to  church  since  she  had  left  home. 
There  was  so  much  to  do  in  the  house. 

She  left  her  aunt  in  a  very  anxious  frame  of  mind. 

And  through  it  all,  Betty  was  conscious  that  she  was  being 
false  to  her  family  and  false  to  herself.  She  was  carrying 
about  with  her  a  thought  which,  if  it  had  been  expressed, 
would  have  startled  these  four  people  little  less  than  the 
explosion  of  an  infernal  machine.  She  was,  indeed,  poten- 
tially an  anarchist !  How  much  easier  for  her  would  be  the 
way  of  virtue,  the  broad,  plain  road  of  convention ! 


IV 

"We'll  drive  you  to  the  station,"  said  Violet,  when  Betty 
announced  that  it  was  necessary  for  her  to  catch  the  8.11 
back  to  Baker  Street.  "Tommy  does  not  get  half  enough 
exercise." 

"Tommy"  was  a  stout,  long-maned,  little  chestnut,  safe  to 
drive,  but  a  pony  of  remarkable  personality.  His  eccen- 
tricities were  a  staple  of  conversation  at  the  Rectory.  The 
three  girls  had  always  found  him  an  excellent  subject 
wherewith  to  entertain  nervous  strangers. 


52  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

Betty  remembered  Hilda,  the  shy  hoyden  of  four  years 
earlier,  blushing  at  the  necessity  to  amuse  some  visitor  at  a 
Rectory  garden-party.  "Betty,  what  am  I  to  talk  about?" 
she  had  asked;  and  Betty  had  said:  "Oh,  tell  them  about 
Tommy." 

The  phrase  had  passed  into  use  as  one  of  the  recognised 
family  jokes,  and  when  the  three  girls  had  started  for  the 
station  in  the  little  bandbox  of  a  governess  cart,  it  came  as  a 
shock  to  Betty  to  find  that  Violet  was  remembering  a  new 
anecdote  about  the  sturdy  little  eccentric,  who  was  stepping 
out  at  the  moment  with  such  admirable  determination. 

Betty  waited  until  the  story  was  finished,  and  then  said 
quietly :  "Telling  me  about  Tommy  ?" 

"Oh,  well  .  .  ."  began  Violet  on  a  note  of  excuse,  but 
Hilda  broke  in  quickly. 

"It  isn't  that,  old  girl,  really,  only  you  have  been  away 
such  a  long  time,  haven't  you?  And  we  feel  rather  out  of 
it  about  your  boarding-house,  and  all  that.  You  haven't 
been  particularly  confidential  about  your  own  affairs,  have 
you?" 

"You're  not  interested,"  returned  Betty. 

"We  are,"  mumbled  Violet. 

"Rather — of  course  we  are,"  supplemented  Hilda.  "Only 
I  think  you  might  make  some  allowances,  just  to-day,  you 
know.  Naturally,  I'm  a  bit  excited.  .  .  ." 

"And  I'm  as  interested  as  I  can  be,"  said  Betty ;  "but  you 
haven't  bothered  to  tell  me  much  about  Mr.  Phelps,  have 
you?" 

"Well,  you  hardly  know  him,  do  you  ?"  asked  Hilda. 

"I  remember  him  quite  well,"  said  Betty. 

"It's  so  difficult  to  talk  to  you  about  some  things,  Bet," 
complained  Hilda,  wrinkling  her  forehead  in  the  manner  of 
her  father.  "You  always  bossed  us,  you  see,  when  you  were 
at  home." 

"I  didn't  mean  to,"  said  Betty. 

"And  then  .  .  ."  began  Hilda. 

"What?"  asked  Betty. 

"I  don't  know,"  returned  Hilda. 


TWO    DAYS  53 

Violet  was  apparently  engrossed  in  her  management  of 
Tommy. 

"And  then  .  .  .  What?"  repeated  Betty. 

"Well,  we  always  feel  that  you're  such  a  born  old  maid," 
said  Violet,  her  gaze  still  intent  on  the  broad  expanse  of 
Tommy's  jogging  back, 

"Oh !"  said  Betty,  and  then  she  laughed — a  laugh  in  which 
the  bitterness  was  not  entirely  due  to  the  cruelty  of  her 
sister's  remark. 

"Well,  aren't  you?"  muttered  Violet.  "You've  said  so 
yourself,  practically.  Heaps  of  times.  When  you  were  go- 
ing away  you  said  you  never  meant  to  marry.  Didn't 
you?" 

"Did  I?  Very  likely,"  said  Betty.  "Only  isn't  there 
rather  a  difference?" 

"Don't  get  huffed,  old  girl,"  put  in  Hilda  affectionately. 

"I  know  I  shall  be  twenty-seven  next  month,"  persisted 
Betty. 

"Twenty-seven's  young  these  days,"  said  Hilda.  "I  shall 
be  twenty-two  in  December,  and  Vi's  twenty-five." 

"Only  just,"  interpolated  Violet,  and  changed  the  con- 
versation effectively  by  poking  Tommy  with  the  whip- 
handle. 

Tommy  immediately  stopped  dead. 

"Oh,  Vi,  you  are  an  idiot!  You  know  he  won't  stand 
that,"  protested  Hilda.  "Now  we  shall  never  get  him  to 
start  again,  and  Betty'll  miss  her  train." 

It  did,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  take  them  several  minutes 
to  pacify  the  insulted  Tommy,  and  induce  him  to  resume 
the  even  tenor  of  his  way  to  the  station ;  and  half-way 
down  the  hill,  which  Tommy  always  took  seriously  and 
exceedingly  slowly,  Betty  suggested  that  she  had  better 
get  out  and  run. 

"It  must  be  ten  past  now,"  she  said. 

"I'll  go  with  you,"  said  Hilda,  "and  Vi  can  come  on.  I 
expect  the  train  '11  be  late." 

There  was  a  hurried  exchange  of  kisses  between  the 
two  elder  sisters — "in  case,"  as  they  said. 


54  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

But  when  Hilda  and  Betty  arrived  at  the  station  they 
found  that  they  had  plenty  of  time,  and  when  presently 
Tommy  had  ambled  complacently  into  the  yard,  the  three 
sisters  made  their  way  together  to  the  front  of  the  plat- 
form to  await  the  overdue  train. 

There  was  quite  a  crowd  in  the  station,  and  Betty  recog- 
nised, with  a  curious  sense  of  familiarity,  the  young  optimist 
who  had  travelled  in  the  same  compartment  with  her  coming 
down.  He  was  looking  very  sunburnt,  his  face  inflamed  to  a 
high,  rich  red.  --No  doubt  he  had  exposed  himself  to  the 
sun  with  the  deliberate  intention  of  getting  as  brown  as 
possible  in  the  time.  And  if  Betty  could  judge  by  his  ex- 
pression, he  was  very  well  satisfied  with  the  result  he  had 
obtained.  She  turned  her  eyes  away  quickly,  afraid  that 
he  might  claim  her  acquaintance. 

"How  that  hot-looking  person  stared!"  Hilda  remarked, 
when  they  came  out  of  earshot. 

"Not  at  you,  though,"  thought  Betty,  with  a  gleam  of 
satisfaction ;  but  she  made  no  comment.  They  might  think 
she  was  a  "born  old  maid"  if  they  liked.  Perhaps  it  was 
better  that  they  should. 

The  train  came  in  at  last. 

Hilda  was  effusive  over  her  good-byes. 

"You'll  come  and  stay  with  us  later.  You  know?  In 
Worcestershire?"  she  said  shyly. 

Betty  nodded.  That  invitation  hurt  her  more  than 
Violet's  coldness. 


The  early  stages  of  Betty's  journey  back  to  town  affected 
her  in  much  the  same  way  as  her  journey  out.  In  the  morn- 
ing she  had  left  Baker  Street  influenced  by  the  familiar  cir- 
cumstance she  was  leaving  behind,  and  she  had  looked  for- 
ward with  dread  to  the  interview  before  her.  Then  it  had 
seemed  to  her  that  her  life  in  Bloomsbury  was  the  essential 
thing;  it  had  represented  in  some  sense  her  standard  of 
values.  She  came  out  of  it  for  a  moment  only  to  return,  as 
she  supposed,  unaffected  by  her  brief  absence. 


TWO    DAYS  55 

Now  she  looked  forward  to  her  return  to  Montague 
Place  with  something  of  the  same  dread  that  she  had  felt 
in  leaving.  Eight  hours  at  Beechcombe  had  revived  so 
strongly  all  her  original  associations,  that  she  could  only 
regard  the  boarding-house  as  an  alien  and  curiously  inferior 
place.  It  represented  drudgery  and  the  fatigue  of  her 
common  routine;  it  represented  also  the  strife  of  her  war 
with  Jacob  Stahl. 

This  contrast,  however,  was  entirely  superficial.  She 
recognised  how  ephemeral  was  each  influence,  even  as  she 
wondered  at  the  apparently  powerful  effect  upon  herself. 
"To-morrow,"  she  thought,  "I  shall  be  back  in  the  thick  of 
it  all  again,  and  to-day  will  be  like  a  sort  of  dream.  And 
if  I  went  back  home  for  good,  I  suppose  I  should  soon  find 
it  difficult  to  believe  I  had  ever  been  away." 

And  then,  quite  deliberately,  she  turned  her  thoughts  to 
Jacob  and  to  the  future. 

At  first  the  issue  was  confused  by  all  the  conventions 
which  ruled  her.  She  could  not  disentangle  her  present 
and,  possibly,  future  relations  with  Jacob  from  the  influ- 
ences of  both  Beechcombe  and  Bloomsbury.  She  was  dis- 
tracted by  the  individualities  of  the  other  people  in  the 
carriage.  She  could  not  help  wondering,  for  instance,  what 
that  anaemic  young  wife  with  the  two  children  would  think 
of  a  woman,  who  ran  away  with  a  man  who  was  not  free 
to  marry  her. 

That  little,  tired  creature,  whose  lack  of  blood  was  merely 
emphasised  by  the  flush  of  sunburn  across  her  cheek- 
bones, had  her  supreme  idea  of  respectability;  all  that  was 
conveyed  to  her  by  the  one  miraculous  word  "marriage." 
She  might  be  a  failure,  her  husband  might  end  his  days  in 
prison  or  the  workhouse,  her  children  might  be  ricketty  and 
consumptive,  and  live  only  long  enough  to  pass  on  their 
weakness  and  disabilities  to  a  third  generation ;  the  mother 
herself  might  be  the  worst  of  citizens,  a  slattern — she  bore 
the  marks  already — feeble-willed,  an  evil  influence  on  the 
character  of  her  offspring,  a  woman  who  might  sink  into 
drunkenness,  if  she  contrived  to  maintain  sufficiently  long 


56  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

her  uncertain  tenure  of  life.  But,  according  to  the  amaz- 
ing morality  of  her  class,  a  morality  that  was  no  less  Betty's 
own,  this  woman  was  essentially  virtuous.  That  weedy- 
looking  youth,  her  husband,  had  paid  his  necessary  shillings 
to  some  authorised  person,  whether  minister  or  registrar, 
and  had  obtained  a  certificate  of  virtue  for  himself  and 
his  wife.  Henceforth  they  were  licensed  by  the  State, 
with  the  full  approval  of  the  Church,  to  indulge  their  de- 
sires and  beget  children.  He  might  be  a  sensualist,  and 
she  a  prostitute,  living  together  without  love,  the  man 
regarding  the  woman  as  a  convenient  outlet  for  his  passion, 
the  woman  selling  herself  for  the  means  of  subsistence  which 
he  provided.  No  one  knew,  and  no  one  cared.  The  only 
essential  required  of  them  was  that  they  should  spend 
ten  minutes  in  making  certain  promises  before  a  properly 
constituted  authority,  and  so  could  produce  on  demand  the 
certificate  which  endorsed  their  entire  respectability.  Ethics 
and  morality  and  the  true  understanding  of  love  and  duty 
weighed  not  a  featherweight  in  the  scale  against  that  slip 
of  paper.  .  .  .  Betty  could  not  realise  these  things  as 
yet,  but  dimly  she  became  aware  that  this  woman's  censure 
was  something  of  small  account,  that  her  life,  however  hal- 
lowed by  a  ten-minute  ceremony,  was  open  to  criticism. 

The  couple  got  out  at  Harrow,  but  the  compartment 
filled  again  at  once,  and  this  time  Betty  had  a  vision  of 
how  such  marriages  are  sometimes  made. 

The  young  woman  opposite  to  her  was  slightly  dishevelled, 
and  her  companion  looked  tired  and  somewhat  bored.  He 
was  self-conscious  when  the  girl  pressed  her  shoulder 
against  him,  and  tried  to  keep  possession  of  his  loose-jointed, 
big-knuckled  hand.  He  wore  a  faint  air  of  being  ashamed 
and  sorry  for  his  day's  work,  she  of  being  proud  and 
possessive.  Almost  Betty  could  hear  her  say:  "You  will 
marry  me,  won't  you?"  and  his  conscientious,  yet  too  per- 
functory, reply:  "Of  course  I  will."  And  he  would,  no 
one  could  doubt  it.  He,  too,  had  his  ideal  of  respectability, 
and  no  doubt  his  firm,  arbiters  of  their  employes'  virtue, 


TWO    DAYS  57 

would  regard  with  extreme  disfavour  an  affiliation  suit  in 
some  local  police-court. 

Betty  pursed  her  lips  and  looked  out  of  the  window.  She 
regarded  with  unseeing  eyes  the  vision  of  shadows  flying 
across  the  darkness ;  she  was  thinking  of  Jacob  Stahl's  love 
for  herself.  Was  it  not  a  true  and  wonderful  thing,  even 
if  he  could  not  face  the  great  effort  of  renunciation  ?  That, 
for  him,  would  be  the  highest  sacrifice.  But  for  her,  the 
final  demand  was  to  dare  the  scorn  of  Beechcombe,  Blooms- 
bury,  and  those  couples  in  the  railway-carriage.  It  seemed 
to  her  that  this  was  the  essential  contrast  between  a  man's 
love  and  a  woman's. 

And  yet  was  not  his  love  for  her  the  greatest  and  most 
desirable  thing  in  her  life?  Something  cherished,  which  she 
had  carried  with  her  through  every  changing  prospect  of 
her  day's  experience?  Bloomsbury  and  Beechcombe  might 
wear  this  semblance  or  that,  but  her  love  for  Jacob  was  the 
thread  upon  which  all  the  circumstance  of  her  life  was  now 
strung. 


IV 
DECISION 


SHE  found  Jacob  waiting  for  her  at  Baker  Street  Sta- 
tion. With  a  certain  consideration  for  Mrs.  Parmenter 
in  her  mind,  Betty  had  asked  him  not  to  meet  her.  She 
had  explained  that  it  was  impossible  for  her  to  say  which 
train  she  would  be  able  to  catch.  His  coming  put  her  in 
another  of  those  false  situations  that  were  so  irritating. 
She  had  intended  to  save  Mrs.  Parmenter  from  any  further 
embarrassment,  and  now.  .  .  .  His  first  words  aggravated 
the  offence. 

"How  did  you  know  which  train  I  should  come  by  ?"  she 
asked. 

"I  didn't,"  he  said.  "I've  been  here  over  an  hour.  I 
met  the  seven-fifty-something,  and  I  was  prepared  to  meet 
every  train  until  midnight." 

"You've  been  here  over  an  hour?"  she  repeated,  and 
added :  "Did  you  tell  Mrs.  Parmenter  you  were  coming  ?" 

"Rather  not,"  replied  Jacob.  "What  business  is  it  of 
hers?  Besides,  I've  been  out  since  two  o'clock.  It's  been 
such  a  glorious  afternoon." 

"Of  course  she'll  think  we've  been  together  all  day,"  said 
Betty. 

"Well,  what  if  she  does  ?"  said  Jacob.  "Look  here,  can't 
we  go  and  have  supper  somewhere?  I  want  to  hear  all 
about  it." 

"Oh,  no!  I  must  go  straight  back."  Betty's  tone  was 
cold  and  determined.  "My  ticket  takes  me  to  Gower  Street. 
We  must  go  on  by  the  Underground." 

Jacob's  face  fell.  "And  when  shall  I  have  a  minute  to 

58 


TWO    DAYS  59 

talk  to  you?"  he  asked.  "I  think  you  might  guess  how 
eager  I  am  to  hear  about  everything." 

"Nothing  happened,"  replied  Betty.  "Absolutely  nothing. 
I  didn't  say  a  word  to  them  about — about  us.  Besides," 
she  went  on  quickly,  seeing  the  frown  of  disapproval  which 
greeted  her  announcement,  "I  shall  be  able  to  talk  to  you 
when  we  get  back." 

"You  won't,"  returned  Jacob.  "The  Blakey  woman  will 
be  there,  confound  her !  There  was  a  telegram  from  her  this 
morning.  I  suppose  she's  coming  up  by  an  excursion  to 
save  a  shilling  on  her  fare.  She's  a  stingy  old  beast!" 

"Goodness !"  exclaimed  Betty ;  "and  her  room  won't  be 
ready  or  anything.  I  must  fly!" 

She  moved  away  quickly,  but  Jacob  came  after  her  and 
caught  her  arm. 

"Betty!"  he  said,  on  a  note  of  urgency. 

"Oh !  what  is  it  ?"  she  asked  impatiently. 

"No,  you  mustn't  ask  me  like  that.  It's  too  important," 
he  protested. 

"I  must  go !"  returned  Betty,  with  even  more  impatience. 

"Have  you  altered  your  mind?"  he  asked. 

She  shook  her  head.    "No.    Do  let  me  go !"  she  said. 

"Well,  then,  what  does  it  matter  if  old  Parmenter  and 
one  of  the  maids  have  to  get  Mrs.  Blakey's  room  ready? 
Why  must  you  be  a  slave  ?" 

"I  can't  argue  about  it  now.  I  must  get  back  at  once," 
was  Betty's  only  defence. 

He  was  suddenly  resentful  and  angry.  "Very  well,"  he 
said  viciously,  "I've  been  on  tenter-hooks  all  day,  simply 
in  agony  to  know  what  you've  decided,  and  now  the  only 
thing  that  appears  to  you  of  the  least  consequence  is  that 
you  should  get  Mrs.  Blakey's  room  ready.  There's  a  servant 
and  Mrs.  Parmenter  to  do  it,  but  you  consider  this  room 
of  more  importance  than  the  whole  of  your  future  and 
mine.  All  right,  you  go  on ;  I'm  not  coming." 

He  had  her  attention  now.  She  turned  and  faced  him  in 
perplexity. 

"Oh,  don't  let  us  quarrel  in  the  station!"  she  pleaded. 


60  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

"And  I've  told  you  everything  that  matters.  I've  told  you 
that  I  haven't  said  a  word  about  us  to  anyone  at  home,  and 
that  I  haven't  changed  my  mind.  What  more  is  there  ?" 

"All  right,  you  can  go  on,"  said  Jacob  bitterly. 

"What  is  the  matter  ?"  asked  Betty. 

"Many  things." 

"Do  be  sensible,"  she  besought  him. 

"Will  you  come  with  me  to  supper  somewhere  and  talk 
quietly?"  he  asked. 

"I  can't,"  said  Betty.    "You  must  see  I  can't." 

"You  can,  but  you're  afraid,"  said  Jacob.  "You  were 
afraid  to  tell  your  people  to-day;  you're  afraid  to  upset 
Mrs.  Parmenter;  you're  afraid  of  what  Mrs.  Blakey  may 
say;  you're  afraid  of  every  mortal  thing;  and  yet  you  de- 
ceive yourself  into  the  belief  that  somehow,  most  miracu- 
lously, you  won't  be  afraid  to  snap  your  fingers  at  them 
all  and  come  away  with  me.  Fairly  absurd,  isn't  it?" 

"I've  said  I'd  come,"  said  Betty. 

"Yes,  and  no  doubt  you  think  you  mean  it,  but  you 
don't,"  replied  Jacob. 

"It's  no  good  arguing  about  it,  is  it  ?"  she  said.  She  was 
suddenly  weak  and  unstrung.  She  was  seized  with  a  ter- 
rible doubt  of  herself.  She  wondered  if  all  that  Jacob  had 
said  were  not  perfectly  true.  She  might  make  up  her  mind, 
but  she  had  not  the  moral  courage  to  face  the  actual  situ- 
ation. Yesterday  she  had  not  dared  to  make  confession  to 
Mrs.  Parmenter;  this  morning  she  had  eagerly  welcomed 
the  excuse  which  relieved  her  of  the  necessity  to  confide  in 
her  father;  and  now  she  was  afraid  of  the  disapproval  of 
Mrs.  Blakey  and  the  boarders.  That  had  not  been  in  her 
thoughts  when  she  had  said  she  must  hurry  back  to  Mon- 
tague Place.  Her  practical  mind  had  instantly  seized  on 
her  obvious  duty,  as  she  saw  it,  in  the  management  of  the 
boarding-house.  But  she  was  ready  to  admit  now  that  she 
was  forced  to  face  the  situation,  that  she  was  afraid  of  the 
strictures,  spoken  or  unspoken,  of  Mrs.  Parmenter  and  Mrs. 
Blakey. 

"It's  no  good  arguing  about  it,"  she  repeated  feebly. 


TWO    DAYS  61 

"Not  a  bit,"  returned  Jacob.  "We've  got  to  do  things, 
not  talk  about  them." 

"We're  going  to,"  she  urged. 

"Well,  put  your  courage  to  the  test  here  and  now,"  he 
said.  "Hang  the  boarding-house  and  all  the  Parmenters 
and  Blakeys,  and  come  out  with  me  to  supper." 

"Oh !  but  .  .  ."  she  began. 

"Precisely,"  returned  Jacob.  "  'But,'  and  then  again 
'but.'  In  other  words,  you're  afraid." 

She  hesitated  a  moment,  staring  down  at  the  platform, 
gently  tapping  her  foot,  and  then  she  raised  her  head  and 
looked  at  him.  "Very  well,  dear,"  she  said,  "where  shall 
we  go?  Only  you  mustn't  be  cross  all  the  time." 

"Oh,  Betty!"  said  Jacob. 

Regardless  of  the  traffic  of  the  station,  he  put  his  hands 
on  her  shoulders  and  gazed  down  into  her  eyes. 

"Jimmy!"  she  protested,  "everyone's  staring  at  us." 

He  disregarded  that.  "No,  you  shan't  come,  dear,"  he 
said.  "I  was  a  brute  to  make  you.  We'll  go  back  now,  at 
once.  I  know  it  '11  be  all  right  now." 

"Come  along,"  said  Betty,  "we're  going  out  to  supper." 

"Not  if  you  don't  want  to,"  he  protested. 

"I  do,"  she  said. 

ii 

In  one  respect,  at  least,  she  had  made  up  her  mind.  She 
must  be  left  alone,  uninfluenced.  This  was  her  own  per- 
sonal problem.  Not  Beechcombe,  nor  Bloomsbury,  nor  even 
Jacob  must  be  allowed  to  dominate  her.  She  must  try, 
however  ineffectually,  to  think  everything  out  for  herself, 
without  pressure,  without  bullying.  It  had  been  her  fate 
to  be  bullied,  she  thought.  Her  father,  her  sisters,  Mrs. 
Parmenter,  the  boarders,  Jacob,  were  always  demanding 
something  from  her.  All  the  life  around  her  was  insistently 
begging  for  help,  and,  whenever  it  had  been  possible,  she 
had  done  her  best  to  supply  their  needs.  She  was  not  re- 
bellious against  this  call  upon  her.  It  appeared  to  her  a 
natural  and  in  many  ways  a  pleasant  thing.  She  loved 


62  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

to  help  and  to  give.  But  this  new  and  most  urgent  demand 
was  of  an  entirely  new  kind.  It  divided  her.  She  could 
not  give  to  either  side  without  taking  from  the  other.  She 
was  becoming  the  rope  of  a  tug  of  war.  If  Jacob  pulled 
harder  than  the  forces  arrayed  against  him,  he  would  win. 
She  refused  to  be  a  rope.  In  this  thing  she  must  be  the 
arbiter. 

Jacob,  recklessly,  had  driven  her  in  a  hansom  to  a  little 
Italian  restaurant  in  Holborn,  near  the  mouth  of  the  Gray's 
Inn  Road.  He  knew  the  place  well.  To  him  it  represented 
his  feeble  efforts  at  economy  in  the  days  when  he  had  been 
writing  advertisements  at  ten  pounds  a  month,  and  had  been 
gradually  eating  up  his  tiny  capital.  He  thought  this  mag- 
nificently named  "Firenze"  restaurant  would  be  quiet  on 
a  bank  holiday.  It  was  too  far  East  for  the  crowd. 

His  forecast  had  been  a  correct  one.  The  long,  narrow, 
rather  dirty  rooms  were  almost  empty,  and  he  led  Betty 
through  the  arch  to  the  farthest  of  the  little  oblong  mar- 
ble tables,  which,  at  this  extremity,  were  not  even  cov- 
ered by  the  coarse,  spotted  cloths  which  dignified  the 
tables  nearer  the  entrance. 

"It's  not  much  of  a  place,"  he  whispered  apologetically, 
one  eye  on  the  smiling  padrone,  "but  I  knew  we  should  be 
quiet  here." 

"It's  all  right,"  Betty  reassured  him.  "I  don't  want  any- 
thing to  eat." 

It  was  true  that  she  was  not  in  the  least  inclined  for 
food,  but  she  always  dreaded  to  eat  in  such  restaurants  as 
these.  She  had  an  expert  analytical  eye  for  the  constituents 
of  "made"  dishes.  Her  experiences  as  a  cook  gave  her 
too  much  knowledge  in  these  matters. 

"Coffee?"  suggested  Jacob. 

She  nodded. 

"Bring  us  some  coffee,  Giuseppe,"  said  Jacob,  with  a 
touch  of  self-consciousness.  He  wanted,  foolishly,  to  apolo- 
gise to  the  waiter  for  the  smallness  of  the  order,  but  he  was 
consoled  by  the  fact  that  Giuseppe  remembered  him  as  an 
old  customer. 


TWO    DAYS  63 

"But  aren't  you  going  to  eat  anything?"  asked  Betty. 
"I  had  supper  before  I  came  away ;  but  you've  had  nothing, 
I  suppose,  since  lunch?" 

"I  don't  want  anything,"  replied  Jacob. 

Giuseppe  put  temptation  before  them  in  the  shape  of 
two  small  hard  rolls  and  two  thin  little  circles  of  butter 
when  he  brought  the  coffee. 

Jacob  ate  part  of  his  roll  absent-mindedly,  and  then  be- 
gan to  smoke. 

"Well?"  he  said. 

"I  didn't  say  anything  at  home,"  said  Betty,  making  the 
plunge,  "because  one  of  my  sisters  is  going  to  be  married 
in  October,  and  .  .  .  well,  I  can't  say  anything  before 
them." 

Jacob  reflected  for  a  moment.  "You  always  sacrifice 
yourself,"  he  said. 

They  sat  facing  each  other  across  the  narrow  marble 
slab,  figured  in  one  place  by  the  pencil  account  of  a  domino 
score.  They  had  to  talk  in  low  voices  by  reason  of  the 
not  very  distant  presence  of  the  padrone,  whose  box  under 
the  arch  overlooked  both  his  magnificent  rooms.  They 
did,  indeed,  appear  quite  magnificent  to  the  padrone. 

"I'm  not  going  to  spoil  Hilda's  chances,"  replied  Betty, 
and  set  her  lips  firmly. 

"I  suppose  it  would  do  that?"  asked  Jacob. 

"It  might,"  she  said. 

"The  man  she's  engaged  to  might  want  to  back  out  if 
he  knew?" 

"He  might.    He's  in  the  Church." 

"Oh,  the  wonderful  charity  of  the  Church!"  commented 
Jacob. 

"We  needn't  quarrel  about  that,"  said  Betty. 

"Oh,  Lord,  no !"  he  replied. 

For  a  few  seconds  they  were  silent,  and  then  Jacob  said : 
"Well,  it  means  postponement,  does  it?" 

"Yes,  for  a  little  time,"  said  Betty.  "And,  Jimmy,  there's 
one  other  thing:  I  must  find  Mrs.  Parmenter  another  part- 
ner before  I  come  away." 


64  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

"I  see,"  replied  Jacob. 

Betty  wondered  at  his  sudden  docility,  and  doubted  the 
quality  of  it.  She  looked  at  him  a  little  anxiously,  trying 
to  read  his  mood. 

He  was  apparently  intent  on  the  domino  score  made  on 
a  conveniently  white  streak  in  the  veining  of  the  marble. 
He  took  out  a  pencil  and  drew  a  ring  round  the  group 
of  figures,  and  then  began  to  black  in  the  circle  with  elabo- 
rate precision. 

"What  are  you  doing,  dear?"  asked  Betty. 

"Nothing,"  returned  Jacob.    "Thinking." 

"I  couldn't  leave  Mrs.  Parmenter  all  alone  there,"  said 
Betty,  desperately.  "I  couldn't  have  that  on  my  conscience. 
She  might  die,  or  go  bankrupt,  and  then  I  should  never 
forgive  myself." 

"Quite,"  murmured  Jacob. 

"Oh !  what  is  the  matter  ?"  pleaded  Betty.  "Do  be  sen- 
sible." 

"I'm  going  to  be,"  replied  Jacob.  He  lifted  his  head  and 
looked  into  her  eyes.  "I'm  going  to  be,"  he  repeated. 
"Quite  sensible.  I'm  a  little  bit  done  just  now,  I  think. 
Beaten.  It's  an  admission  of  weakness,  I  know,  but  you've 
been  too  strong  for  me.  You've  been  so  elusive.  And  now 
you've  got  all  the  best  of  the  argument,  and  I  feel  that  I 
can't  go  over  all  the  old  ground  again.  I'm  too  tired,  for 
one  thing." 

He  paused  for  a  moment,  watching  the  trouble  in  Betty's 
eyes,  and  then  he  went  on :  "It  seems  that  I've  got  to  wait, 
anyway.  I've  got  to  go  away  and  leave  you  to  look  at 
things  quietly.  Two  months,  three  months,  till  your  sister's 
married,  and  you've  found  another  partner  for  old  Parmen- 
ter. It's  all  perfectly  sensible  and  reasonable.  I  see  that, 
and  I  give  in  absolutely.  I'll  write  to  Meredith  and  find 
out  about  rooms  'or  something.  ...  I  wonder  whether  I 
shall  ever  see  you  again?" 

"Oh,  Jimmy!"  expostulated  Betty. 

"Why?"  he  asked.    "I'm  being  'good,'  aren't  I?" 

Betty  wrinkled  her  forehead,  and  looked  past  him  at  a 


TWO    DAYS  65 

coloured  advertisement  of  somebody's  sauce  that  hung  on 
the  wall  behind  him.  She  was  vividly  conscious  of  the  na- 
ture of  the  sauce;  the  graphic  representation  of  the  bottle 
which  contained  it  brought  before  her  the  atmosphere  of 
the  Montague  Place  kitchen.  She  thought  quite  distinctly 
that  she  could  smell  it. 

"I  don't  know  what  to  do,"  she  said  petulantly. 

Jacob  leaned  over  the  table  and  took  her  hand.  "But, 
Betty,  dear,"  he  said,  "it's  all  so  easy  now.  I'm  complacent. 
I've  given  in,  really  I  have.  I  mean  it.  I'll  wait." 

"Oh,  I  can't  let  you  go  away  like  that!"  said  Betty. 

"Would  you  sooner  I  went  in  a  temper?" 

"I  don't  want  you  to  go  away  at  all,"  said  Betty.  She 
drew  her  hand  away  from  him  and  covered  her  eyes.  Life 
was  so  impossibly  difficult. 

"But  I  must,"  continued  Jacob  relentlessly.  "Neither  you 
nor  I  could  stand  three  more  months  of  this  sort  of  thing. 
You  must  see  that."  He  looked  at  her,  but  her  hands  were 
still  over  her  eyes,  and  she  made  no  response. 

"You  do  see  that,  don't  you  ?"  he  urged. 

She  dropped  her  hands  on  the  table  and  looked  at  him. 
"Oh,  I'll  come!"  she  said.  "What  does  it  matter?  Let's 
go  to-night,  at  once.  I'll  come  back  with  you  and  get  my 
things,  and  we'll  go  to  an  hotel  to-night,  and  to  Cornwall 
by  the  first  train  to-morrow.  Only  we  must  get  it  over  at 
once." 

In  his  mind,  Jacob  hesitated.  Outwardly  he  gave  no  sign 
of  his  uncertainty,  but  a  picture  of  taking  Betty  instantly 
away  with  him  presented  itself  as  a  thing  exquisitely  at- 
tractive. Yet  even  as  his  desire  for  that  accomplishment 
leapt  into  life,  he  saw  with  even  greater  distinctness  a  pic- 
ture of  an  unwilling  Betty,  burdened  with  remorse  and 
regret.  He  saw  her  miserable  and  fearful,  depressed  and 
ashamed.  She  would  come  to  hate  him  as  the  cause  of 
her  unhappiness.  That  was  not  the  thing  he  desired;  no 
satisfaction  could  come  by  that  road. 

His  hesitation  was  so  slight  that  Betty,  strung  up  momen- 
tarily to  the  thought  of  an  instant  purpose  which  would 


66  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

leave  all  doubts  behind  her,  did  not  notice  his  pause.  She 
was  hardly  thinking  of  him.  She  was  concentrating  all  her 
energies  to  maintain  the  strength  of  her  resolution. 

"What  a  dear  you  are!"  said  Jacob.  "I  know  you'd 
sacrifice  yourself,  but  it  won't  do." 

"Why  not?"  she  asked,  with  a  touch  of  asperity.  "Will 
nothing  satisfy  you?" 

He  smiled  grimly.  "I'm  afraid  I'm  rather  difficult,"  he 
said.  "But,  darling,  don't  think  I'm  cross  or  anything; 
really  I'm  not.  It's  only  that  I  see  so  clearly  that  you'd 
be  miserable." 

"What  does  that  matter?"  she  asked.  "I  shall  be  mis- 
erable in  any  case." 

He  shook  his  head.  "No  you  won't,"  he  said.  "It'll  be 
all  right.  I'll  go  away  for  three  months,  and  leave  you 
to  think  it  over  and  find  a  new  partner  for  the  boarding- 
house.  I  shall  write  to  you,  of  course,  but  not  miserable 
letters.  .  .  ." 

"But  I  don't  want  you  to  go  away,"  she  interrupted. 

"Oh,  it  '11  be  all  right,"  was  all  the  answer  he  could 
find. 

"Jimmy,"  said  Betty,  on  an  urgent  note,  "you  believe 
that  I  will  come  at  the  end  of  three  months?" 

"Yes,  of  course,"  he  said. 

The  see-saw  which  had  swung  so  vainly  and  so  unceas- 
ingly for  forty-eight  hours,  was  still  tilting  aimlessly  up 
and  down.  At  her  hint  of  agreement  he  was  on  the  ground 
again,  doubting.  When  she  was  willing,  he  opposed  her; 
when  she  agreed  to  a  parting,  he  desired  fiercely  to  wring 
from  her  again  another  admission  that  she  would  come 
with  him  at  once  if  he  willed  it. 

But  even  as  he  realised  this  alternation,  he  saw  clearly — 
perhaps  for  the  first  time — the  utter  futility  of  their  un- 
ending strife.  He  saw,  too,  that  it  must  end  in  disgust. 
They  would  come  to  hate  each  other.  He  must  be  strong 
now,  resolute,  inflexible.  His  mind  had  accepted  the  neces- 
sity for  a  truce,  and  he  must  abide  by  that.  It  was  a  tem- 
porary solution,  but  the  only  one. 


TWO   DAYS  67 

"Yes,  yes,  dear,  I'm  sure  you  will,"  he  said.  "We'll 
count  it  as  settled,  agreed  upon.  I  do  see  your  argument. 
It  '11  be  all  right.  I'll  go  away  for  three  months." 

They  were  both  conscious  of  relief. 

"It  will  be  all  right,  dear,"  she  said,  and  gave  him  her 
hand  again  across  the  table,  without  any  thought  of  Giu- 
seppe hovering  in  the  background. 

And  then  she  spoilt  it  all  by  adding :  "And  perhaps  some- 
thing might  happen  .  .  ." 

He  understood  the  reference.  They  had  avoided  open 
mention  of  the  possibility  that  his  wife  might  die,  but  the 
thought  of  it,  he  knew,  had  been  sometimes  on  Betty's  mind 
as  a  miraculous  solution. 

"Oh  no,  darling,"  he  said,  "don't  think  of  it  in  that  way ! 
Face  it  all  in  the  next  three  months.  Don't  hope  for  mira- 
cles. Don't  even  think  of  them.  It's  just  the  whole  essence 
of  the  thing  that  you  must  come,  because  you  know  that  it's 
the  sensible  thing  to  do." 

She  nodded  and  sighed. 

The  cloud  hung,  imminent  once  more,  but  he  dissolved 
it  by  an  effort  of  will. 

"Don't  sigh,  dear,"  he  said  manfully.  "You'll  see  things 
more  clearly  when  I'm  gone."  And  mentally  he  was  doubt- 
ing the  strength  of  her  resolution  while  he  held  on  to  his 
own.  He  had  even  a  sense  of  being  uplifted.  He  had 
been  strong,  after  all,  he  thought,  self-sacrificing,  magnani- 
mous. .  .  . 

"Do  not  see  you  vair  often  now,"  remarked  Giuseppe,  as 
he  smilingly  accepted  a  too-generous  tip — Jacob's  indul- 
gence to  his  own  self-esteem,  the  bill  had  been  so  ridicu- 
lously small. 

"No.  And  you  won't  see  me  again  for  goodness  knows 
how  long,"  returned  Jacob.  "I'm  going  away — to  Corn- 
wall." 

"To  Cornwall!"  repeated  Giuseppe,  with  the  necessary 
show  of  astonishment,  although  he  had  no  idea  where  Corn- 
wall might  be. 


68  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

The  padrone  bowed  them  out  as  if  they  had  made  his 
fortune. 

in 

They  were  almost  cheerful  as  they  walked  home  together. 

Betty  was  so  conscious  of  her  present  integrity  that  she 
had  forgotten  her  qualms  about  the  arrangements  for  Mrs. 
Blakey's  reception.  Betty  saw  only  the  prospect  of  three 
months'  energy  before  her,  the  kind  of  energy  which  she 
could  expend  without  effort.  She  would  find  a  new  part- 
ner who  would  be  capable  of  running  the  place  efficiently, 
and  she  would  work  up  "the  place"  itself  into  a  valuable 
property.  September  was  a  splendid  month  for  getting  new 
boarders.  She  would  advertise  in  the  Daily  Telegraph. 
She  would  spend  all  the  little  capital  left  to  her,  some  fifty 
pounds  or  so,  in  providing  for  Mrs.  Parmenter's  future 
welfare. 

She  spoke  of  her  plans  to  Jacob  as  they  walked,  and  he 
listened  and  made  suggestions.  He  was  still  upheld  by  the 
glow  of  approval  he  felt  for  his  own  decision.  For  him 
there  should  be  no  backsliding  or  hint  of  return.  He  was 
weak  in  many  ways — he  saw  himself  so  plainly  to-night — 
but  he  was  gaining  strength.  He  would  work  desperately 
hard  at  that  novel  of  his  in  Cornwall.  , 


IV 

And,  indeed,  their  resolution  and  agreement  held  during 
the  week  that  followed.  A  stillness  had  fallen  upon  them, 
and  when  they  were  alone  together,  they  spoke  quietly  of 
their  separate  determinations  to  work  during  the  months 
that  were  coming.  Beyond  that  interval  they  hardly  dared 
to  peer.  A  certain  peace  had  come  to  them.  For  the  mo- 
ment both  were  content  to  wait. 

Meredith,  Jacob's  friend,  had  risen  to  the  occasion.  There 
was  a  house,  he  wrote,  at  Trevarrian,  in  North  Cornwall, 
which  had  not  been  let  all  the  summer.  It  was  a  fair-sized 
place,  and  generally  commanded  a  high  rent  during  the 


TWO    DAYS  69 

holiday  season;  but  the  owner,  who  was  the  principal  far- 
mer in  the  village,  had  been  unlucky  this  year,  and  would 
be  glad  to  take  ten  shillings  a  week  for  the  autumn  and 
winter.  Meredith  offered  to  make  arrangements.  He  was 
living  at  Forth,  some  three  miles  away,  and  had  walked 
over  and  seen  the  farmer. 

To  Jacob  and  Betty  the  opportunity  seemed  a  good  one, 
but  she  was  a  little  doubtful  whether  she  approved  the  idea 
of  his  living  all  alone  in  that  "fair-sized"  house. 

"Of  course,  I  shall  get  some  woman  to  cook  for  me,  and 
wash  up,  and  that  kind  of  thing,"  explained  Jacob. 

"Well,  of  course,"  said  Betty,  with  a  smile. 

"Meredith  doesn't,"  returned  Jacob.  "He  does  every 
blessed  thing  for  himself." 

"I  wonder  what  sort  of  a  mess  he  makes  of  it?"  mused 
Betty,  with  pity. 

"You  don't  think  men  can  do  anything  for  themselves?" 

"Not  of  that  sort,"  replied  Betty,  and  looked  at  him  with 
a  sudden  tenderness. 

"Oh,  well,  I  admit  I'm  not  good  at  it,"  said  Jacob ;  "but 
I  shall  manage  all  right  with  a  woman  from  the  village. 
There  is  a  little  village  of  about  ten  houses  there,  Mere- 
dith says." 

"Won't  you  be  horribly  lonely?"  asked  Betty. 

"Of  course  I  shall,"  said  Jacob,  and  trenched  on  for- 
bidden ground  by  adding:  "But  I  shall  know  that  it  will 
only  be  for  three  months." 

"Yes,  it  will  only  be  for  three  months,"  agreed  Betty. 
She  tried  to  put  enthusiasm  into  her  acknowledgment,  and 
did  at  least  succeed  in  deceiving  him,  for  he  looked  at  her 
with  fond  and  grateful  eyes.  But  she  had  seen  at  that  mo- 
ment, with  some  return  of  the  old  pain,  that  she  would  be 
finally  committed  by  this  agreement,  pledged  beyond  all 
hope  of  escape.  If  she  did  not  go  at  the  end  of  three 
months,  what  would  become  of  him?  She  never  conceived 
the  possibility  that  he  would  change — that  separation  would 
affect  his  feeling  for  her.  It  might  have  been  better  for 
Jacob  if  he  had  been  less  devoted  at  times.  If  she  had 


70  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

been  less  sure  of  him,  she  might  earlier  have  realised  the 
wonderful  quality  of  her  feeling  for  him. 


One  concession  she  made,  at  which  Jacob  fondly  grasped 
as  if  it  were  some  kind  of  definite  endorsement  to  their 
agreement.  She  allowed  him  to  buy  a  wedding-ring  for 
her  to  wear  when  she  came  to  Trevarrian.  She  even  per- 
mitted him  to  put  it  on  her  finger  when  they  were  alone  in 
the  drawing-room  that  evening. 

"You're  full  of  contradictions,  you  know,"  she  said,  as 
she  looked  down  at  her  hand;  and  then  she  frowned,  and 
almost  hastily  took  off  the  ring. 

"I  don't  see  why,"  Jacob  said. 

"One  minute  you  don't  believe  in  marriage  at  all,"  she 
said,  "and  the  next — well,  you  buy  this." 

"It's  only  a  symbol,"  he  explained.  "And  if  I  don't 
believe  in  marriage  in  theory,  I  may  believe  in  the  prac- 
tice, in  certain  circumstances.  You  know  that  I  would 
put  any  belief  of  mine  on  one  side  to  make  you  happy.  You 
know  that  I  would  marry  you  if  I  could." 

She  had  it  in  her  mind  to  say  that  his  beliefs  accorded 
with  his  desires  on  occasion,  but  she  did  not  want  to  stir 
up  again  the  old  controversy,  so  she  nodded  and  said  quietly, 
"Oh,  yes,  I  know,"  as  she  gave  back  the  ring  to  him. 

"Won't  you  keep  it?"  he  asked. 

"Oh  no,  you  must  keep  it,"  she  said. 

After  that  he  kept  it  in  his  pocket,  and  looked  at  it  many 
times  a  day.  He  found  some  feeling  of  certainty  in  the 
sight  of  that  pledge.  She  would  never  have  allowed  him 
to  buy  it  if  she  had  not  meant  to  keep  her  promise,  he 
thought. 

VI 

And  she  gave  him  a  more  faithful  sign  of  that  true 
feeling  of  hers  when  the  actual  parting  came. 
During  all  those  months  in  Montague  Place  Jacob  had 


TWO    DAYS  71 

been  looking  eagerly  for  some  such  sign  as  this ;  never  had 
he  felt  sure  of  her  love  for  him.  That  had  been  his  tragedy 
through  life,  he  believed :  he  had  never  been  able  to  inspire 
lasting  affection.  Both  his  first  love  and  the  woman  he 
had  married  had  failed  him ;  neither  had  been  able  to  give 
him  that  strong  and  enduring  affection  he  so  earnestly  de- 
sired. He  found  the  fault  in  himself.  He  was  too  weak, 
he  believed,  and  too  eager  for  love.  He  was  still  influenced 
by  the  romantic  conceptions  of  the  Victorian  novel.  He 
saw  the  ideal  of  the  woman  as  the  strong,  masterful  male 
of  sentimental  fiction,  and  had  not  realised  that  everyone 
may  find  his  complement,  and  that  woman  is  certainly  not 
less  various  than  man.  And  through  all  this  affair  with 
Betty  he  had  been  the  aggressor,  although  his  attack  had 
been  carried  on  by  pleading  and  the  admission  of  weak- 
ness. Not  once  had  she  met  him  quite  half-way.  Little 
wonder,  then,  that  he  doubted  if  here,  at  last,  was  the  ideal 
for  which  he  had  lived,  or  that  he  was  inclined  to  self-pity 
for  his  constant  failure  to  win  love. 

Yet,  at  the  last,  he  hoped. 

Their  farewell  was  made,  compromisingly  and  most  un- 
comfortably, in  the  tiny  lobby  which  separated  the  coaches 
of  the  corridor  train.  He  had  marked  his  seat  in  a  smok- 
ing-compartment  by  depositing  book,  hat,  umbrella,  and 
hand-bag;  and  now  they  had  sought  this  little  eddy,  where, 
in  the  brief  intervals  between  the  passage  of  travellers 
and  porters,  they  might  snatch  an  instant's  solitude. 

Jacob  was  faintly  elated  by  this  embarkation  on  adven- 
ture, a  little  distracted  by  the  stir  of  life  about  him;  and 
it  was  Betty  who  took  the  initiative  for  the  first  time,  and 
showed  that  she  was  the  more  single-minded  of  the  two. 

She  took  him  by  the  arm,  almost  roughly,  and  snatched 
his  attention  from  the  bustle  of  the  train.  "Oh,  you  will 
take  care  of  yourself,  won't  you?"  she  asked  passionately. 

"Take  care  of  myself  ?  Oh  yes,  of  course,"  he  said.  Then 
he  saw  that  she  was  crying. 

"Betty,"  he  said,  "do  you  really  care  so  much?" 

She  clung  to  him  then,  unheeding.     "I  will  come!"  she 


72  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

said ;  "I  will  come !  Do  look  after  yourself  properly.  Don't 
go  playing  about  on  the  cliffs,  or  taking  any  risks." 

"Not  for  three  months,  anyway,"  he  replied. 

''I  shall  be  there  to  look  after  you  then,"  said  Betty.  She 
was  fumbling  for  a  handkerchief. 

And  even  the  anti-climax  that  followed — as  he  tried  to 
oust  another  passenger  from  a  window  in  the  corridor,  and 
could  only  wave  a  miserable  good-bye  to  the  pathetic  figure 
of  Betty,  standing  lonely  and  apparently  deserted  on  the 
platform — did  not  destroy  the  new  hope  and  confidence 
which  her  whole-hearted  protest  had  given  him. 


BOOK  II 
SEPARATION 


V 

POOR   MRS.    PARMENTER 


WHEN  Jacob  had  gone,  Betty  found  that  the  boarding- 
house  in  Montague  Place  had  changed  its  character. 
It  was  thus  that  the  phenomenon  was  presented  to  her ;  she 
did  not  realise  that  the  change  was  solely  in  her  own  vision 
of  the  house,  in  all  the  thoughts  that  she  brought  to  her 
knowledge  of  it.  To  her  it  seemed  like  a  place  newly  white- 
washed. It  had  a  strange  emptiness,  and  yet,  despite  its 
air  of  desertion  and  coldness,  it  held  for  her  a  promise 
of  peace,  the  spiritual  comfort  of  a  place  of  worship.  She 
turned  to  it  with  a  sigh  of  resignation  and  relief  as  she 
had  sometimes  turned  to  a  church  service.  Here  she  could 
find  the  comfort  of  easy  relinquishment  to  a  destiny  that 
required  from  her  no  desperate  opposition  to  the  forces  she 
had  always  regarded  as  her  ethical  guides.  Her  father,  her 
aunt,  her  sisters,  Mrs.  Parmenter,  even  Mrs.  Blakey,  would 
all  applaud  her  separation  from  Jacob,  her  choice  of  the 
plain,  easy  duty  that  was,  they  would  tell  her,  so  obviously 
right  and  good  for  her  to  choose.  She  had  found  a  sanc- 
tuary, fleeing  from  life  as  a  nun  to  her  convent.  Here 
she  might  follow  the  way  of  the  Church  in  barren,  satisfied 
self-approval. 

Mrs.  Parmenter  confirmed  that  view  of  life  the  same 
afternoon  when  she  came  down  to  the  drawing-room  for  tea. 
Mrs.  Blakey,  the  only  boarder  then  staying  in  the  house 
who  was  ever  in  for  that  meal,  had  gone  to  tea  with  a 
friend. 

Mrs.  Parmenter,  as  was  natural  to  her  temperament,  ap- 
proached the  topic  openly,  but  with  a  certain  characteristic 
obliqueness. 

75 


76  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

"I  suppose  Mr.  Stoll  won't  get  in  till  nearly  dark,"  she 
began,  and  passed  from  that,  momentarily,  to  a  considera- 
tion of  the  many  empty  rooms  in  the  house,  and  so  finally 
to  a  consideration  of  Betty's  future  plans. 

"I  suppose  you'll  be  hardly  leaving  here  now,  dear,  for 
some  long  time  to  come?"  she  suggested,  and  only  the 
faintest  trembling  of  her  head  indicated  her  nervousness 
in  approaching  the  central  topic. 

"Certainly  not  for  at  least  three  months,"  returned  Betty, 
bravely  indicating  the  proposed  limit  to  her  conventual  dis- 
traction. 

"Oh,  well,"  said  Mrs.  Parmenter,  with  evident  relief,  "a 
lot  may  happen  in  three  months.  Maybe  you'll  both  have 
changed  your  minds  before  then." 

Betty,  still  poised,  although  wrapped  for  a  moment  in  a 
feeling  of  comforting  security,  was  uncertain  whether  the 
prospect  was  agreeable  or  not.  "We  may,"  she  said  ten- 
tatively. 

Mrs.  Parmenter  carefully  gathered  up  the  corners  of  her 
outspread  handkerchief  and  shook  the  crumbs  it  contained 
into  the  slop-basin.  "It's  wonderful  what  a  difference  it 
makes  when  you  don't  see  each  other  for  a  while,"  she  re- 
marked. "Not,  as  I've  always  said,  that  I've  anything 
against  Mr.  Stoll,  only  that  under  the  circumstances  it  was 
better  that  he  should  go  away  just  now." 

"Well,  he's  gone,"  said  Betty. 

"And,  of  course,  you'll  please  yourself  as  to  when  you'll 
see  him  again." 

Betty  nodded  without  much  confidence.  She  was  sud- 
denly aware  of  her  solitude.  None  of  her  acquaintances 
knew  the  facts,  and  there  was  no  one  in  whom  she  could 
confide,  to  whom  she  could  go  for  advice.  Every  mem- 
ber of  that  little  circle  about  her  would  so  inevitably  be 
shocked  and  outraged,  would  so  certainly  say  precisely  the 
same  things.  She  was  shut  into  her  convent,  and  must 
content  herself  within  the  limit  of  its  consolations.  She 
might  as  well  expect  to  be  encouraged  in  the  utterance  of 
blasphemy  as  in  her  feeling  for  Jacob  Stahl. 


SEPARATION  77 

"Although,"  continued  Mrs.  Parmenter,  "I  should  be  the 
last  person  to  stand  in  your  way,  dear,  if  I  thought  you  were 
going  to  make  yourself  any  happier  by  marryin'  him." 

"I  expect  I  shall,  you  know,"  put  in  Betty  quickly.  She 
felt  that  her  escape  was  being  cut  off,  and  that  she  must, 
with  whatever  important  reservations,  make  it  quite  clear 
that  this  parting  was  not  final. 

Mrs.  Parmenter  firmly  closed  her  eyes.  She  may  have 
been  praying  for  guidance,  but  if  so  none  apparently  was 
vouchsafed,  for  she  took  an  undoubtedly  weak  line  when, 
after  a  recognisable  interval,  she  opened  them  again. 

"Well,  of  course,  you  know  best  how  you  feel  about 
it,"  she  said,  with  a  faint  sniff  of  disapproval. 

"Yes,  I  suppose  I  do,"  Betty  replied ;  and  anticipating  any 
repetition  of  the  futile  objections  she  had  already  heard 
advanced  by  her  partner,  she  got  to  her  feet  and  packed  the 
tea-tray. 

"Alice  can  very  well  do  that,"  remonstrated  Mrs.  Par- 
menter. She  thought  the  present  occasion  peculiarly  suit- 
able for  the  discussion  of  the  topic  of  Mr.  Stahl.  She  was 
warmed  now  to  speak  her  mind  openly,  and  did  not  wish 
to  lose  the  opportunity.  There  were  times  when  she  was 
a  little  afraid  of  Miss  Betty  Gale. 

"Oh,  Alice  has  quite  enough  to  do,"  returned  Betty. 
"Besides,  I  must  go  now  to  see  about  the  dinner." 

"Hadn't  we  better  look  out  for  another  maid  in  place  of 
Olive?"  asked  Mrs.  Parmenter,  feebly  relinquishing  her  de- 
sire. 

Betty  wrinkled  her  forehead.  "Not  till  the  house  is  likely 
to  fill  up  again,"  she  said.  "We  can  manage  till  then.  Alice 
works  a  hundred  times  better  now  she's  alone."  She  picked 
up  the  tray,  and  then  stood  for  a  moment  with  it  in  her 
hands,  looking  down  at  her  partner. 

"And  it's  really  no  use  talking  about  it,  you  know,"  she 
said.  "I've  told  you  that  it  won't  be  for  three  months  at 
least,  and  you  needn't  be  afraid  that  I  shall  go  off  and  leave 
you  in  the  lurch.  If  I  do  go  away  any  time,  I  shall  find  you 
another  partner  first." 


78  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

Mrs.  Parmenter  appeared  to  be  swallowing  a  belated 
crumb.  "It  isn't  that,  my  dear,"  she  said.  "I'm  sure  there's 
no  reason  why  you  should  consider  me.  It's  only  .  .  ." 

But  Betty  could  not  hear  that.  "Of  course,  there's  every 
reason  why  I  should  consider  you,"  she  returned  quickly. 
"I  couldn't  possibly  go  away  and  leave  you  here  all  alone, 
and  I  don't  mean  to.  But  please  don't  argue  with  me  about 
it.  It  isn't  any  use,  really."  She  took  a  step  towards  the 
door,  and  then,  possessed  by  a  sudden  spirit  of  courage, 
she  half  turned  and  added :  "If  it  were  only  a  question  of 
our  not  having  enough  money,  I  should  go  to-morrow." 

Mrs.  Parmenter  did  not  understand,  but  in  the  moment 
that  elapsed  before  she  replied,  Betty  realised  with  a  thrill 
of  fear  that  she  dare  not  burn  her  boats  as  yet.  How  could 
she  stand  three  months'  nagging?  Moreover,  Mrs.  Par- 
menter, if  she  knew  the  truth,  might  consider  it  necessary 
to  inform  Beechcombe  Rectory  of  its  daughter's  mad,  im- 
moral project,  and  then  .  .  .  Betty  could  have  gasped  with 
relief  when  her  partner,  evidently  choosing  her  words  with 
some  deliberation,  said: 

"Well,  no,  perhaps  not,  dear ;  and  I  don't  know  that  that 
is  after  all  the  chief  objection.  .  .  ." 

She  was  going  to  say  more,  but  Betty  had  no  wish  to 
hear  any  definition  of  that  "chief  objection,"  and  cut  it  off 
at  once  by  saying:  "I  must  go  and  put  the  meat  in,  or  it'll 
never  be  done  by  half-past  seven."  She  might  have  added 
that  it  was  hardly  possible  for  her  to  discuss  so  desperate 
a  subject  while  she  stood  in  the  middle  of  the  room  with  a 
tea-tray  in  her  hands. 

"That  was  silly  of  me,"  she  reflected  as  she  went  down 
into  the  kitchen,  and  sighed  at  the  realisation,  so  plainly 
brought  before  her,  that  there  was  no  one  in  whom  she 
could  confide. 

Certainly  the  house  was  very  empty,  and  it  was  haunted 
by  the  ghost  of  a  departed  Jacob.  When  her  immediate 
occupation  with  the  preparing  of  dinner  was  over,  Betty 
went  up  to  the  second  floor  and  looked  at  his  deserted 
room. 


SEPARATION  79 

"I  will  come,  dear,"  she  whispered  to  the  spirit  that  lived 
there. 

ii 

But  if  Mrs.  Parmenter's  too  obvious  absorption  in  her 
own  interests  was  an  influence  that  might  have  played  Ja- 
cob's game  for  him,  and  more  subtly  than  he  had  played 
it  for  himself,  other  forces  more  than  counterbalanced 
the  effect  of  the  old  woman's  selfishness.  There  was,  for 
instance,  the  advice  of  Mrs.  Blakey,  at  once  shrewd  and 
apparently  disinterested. 

Betty  found  her  alone  in  the  drawing-room  one  night 
some  four  or  five  days  after  Jacob  had  gone.  It  was  after 
ten  o'clock,  and  she  was  sipping  her  whisky-and-water  in 
solitary  state,  evidently  bored  by  her  own  company.  She 
had,  as  usual,  a  book  in  her  lap,  but  no  one  had  ever  seen 
her  actually  reading. 

"Oh,  come  in,  my  dear,  for  charity's  sake,"  she  said,  when 
Betty  looked  in  to  see  if  the  room  were  empty.  "Every- 
one's out  or  gone  to  bed,  and  I'm  dying  for  someone  to 
talk  to." 

"Even  me,"  suggested  Betty,  as  she  accepted  the  invi- 
tation. 

"You'll  get  no  compliments  from  me,"  returned  Mrs. 
Blakey  with  an  assumption  of  asperity,  "though  I  dare  say 
you've  been  missing  them  the  last  few  days,  now  that  our 
Mr.  Stahl  has  taken  himself  off  to  the  seaside  and  left 
you  in  the  lurch.  But  I  suppose  he'll  be  back  again  before 
long?" 

"He  didn't  say  anything  about  coming  back,"  said  Betty 
quietly.  "I  believe  he's  going  to  stay  in  Cornwall ;  anyway, 
for  the  winter." 

"Dear,  dear,  what  a  tragedy!"  said  Mrs.  Blakey  briskly; 
"and  soon  there'll  be  nothing  for  it  but  double  dummy  with 
Mr.  Franklin,  I  suppose?" 

"Oh,  I  can  come  up  and  play  when  you  want  me,"  replied 
Betty.  "There  isn't  very  much  for  me  to  do  just  now  while 
the  house  is  so  empty." 


80  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

Mrs.  Blakey  made  a  noise  that  may  be  rendered  as  "Cht !" 

Betty  looked  up  and  smiled. 

"Oh,  you  needn't  be  afraid  of  an  old  woman's  tongue," 
said  Mrs.  Blakey.  "I  can  keep  it  still  enough  when  I've 
a  mind  to.  And  I  shan't  be  offended  either  if  you  don't 
want  to  confide  in  me;  you're  a  quiet  little  mouse  at  the 
best  of  times.  But  you  needn't  pretend,  my  dear,  that  I 
don't  know  all  about  it." 

"There  isn't  anything  to  know,"  protested  Betty. 

"Quite  enough,,"  said  Mrs.  Blakey.  "I  fancy  I  shouldn't 
,be  far  out,  for  instance,  if  I  guessed  that  the  young  man 
we're  talking  about  had  asked  you  to  spend  the  winter  in 
Cornwall  with  him." 

Betty  blushed  and  a  sudden  doubt  shook  her.  Had  the 
shrewd  Mrs.  Blakey  perhaps  guessed  also  that  there  was 
some  obstacle  in  the  way?  Her  next  speech  brought  re- 
assurance. 

"And  perhaps  I  shouldn't  be  so  very  wrong  either,  if  I 
said  that  he  hasn't  given  up  all  hope  of  it  yet,"  she  con- 
tinued. "But  I  think  you're  a  wise  young  woman  in  per- 
suading him  to  give  you  both  time  to  think  it  over.  I'm 
not  one  of  those  who're  always  saying  'Marry  in  haste 
and  repent  at  leisure,'  but  you  two  have  been  cooped  up 
in  one  house  for  the  best  part  of  a  year,  and  you  can't  be 
expected  to  know  your  own  minds  till  you've  had  a  chance 
of  seeing  how  you  get  on  without  each  other." 

"You  think  that  he  .  .  ."  began  Betty,  admitting  the 
accuracy  of  the  general  hypothesis. 

"Well,  to  tell  you  the  truth,  I  was  thinking  more  about 
you,  my  dear,"  returned  Mrs.  Blakey;  "for  it  seems  to  me 
that  it's  you  that  has  the  most  to  lose." 

"Oh,  it  isn't  that,"  interposed  Betty. 

"Ah  yes,  but  it  is  just  that,"  replied  Mrs.  Blakey,  and 
took  a  quick  sip  of  whisky-and-water.  "It  is  that,  because 
you're  just  one  of  those  dear  creatures  who're  ready  to 
sacrifice  themselves.  Now,  now,  hear  me  out,"  she  went 
on  quickly,  anticipating  Betty's  denial,  "and  give  me  credit 
for  knowing  something  about  the  world  after  living  in  it  for 


SEPARATION  81 

sixty-five  years.  What  I  mean,  child,  is  that  you're  al- 
ways looking  after  other  people,  and  I  wish  there  were 
more  like  you,  and  I've  wondered  sometimes  whether  you 
haven't  been  a  little  inclined  to  be  too  sorry  for  our  Mr. 
Stahl.  He's  a  nice  young  man — a  little  hasty-tempered 
sometimes,  perhaps — and  I  like  him,  but  he's  got  the  sort 
of  face  that  makes  women  want  to  take  care  of  him.  He's 
come  in  here  sometimes  looking  such  a  picture  of  loneli- 
ness that  I've  had  a  mind  to  kiss  him  myself  just  to  cheer 
him  up  a  bit;  and  I  know  well  enough  that  you've  often 
felt  the  same,  and  your  kisses,  I've  no  doubt,  were  much 
more  effective  than  any  of  mine  could  have  been.  Only 
that  isn't  a  safe  ground  for  marriage,  my  dear.  I  don't 
say  that  you  couldn't  and  wouldn't  go  on  mothering  him 
till  the  end  of  the  chapter,  but  the  time  would  come  when 
he'd  see  through  you,  and  want  the  sort  of  love  you  mightn't 
be  able  to  give  him.  It  may  be  so,  I  say,  I  don't  know; 
but,  if  I  were  you,  I  should  give  myself  a  nice  long,  quiet 
time  to  think  it  over  before  you  tie  yourself  up  for  life, 
and  if  you  find  that  you're  only  sorry  for  him  at  the  end 
of  that  time — well,  if  you'll  take  my  advice,  my  dear,  you 
won't  marry  him,  for  it  won't  lead  to  happiness  for  either 
of  you.  There  now,  I've  made  my  throat  dry  by  talking 
so  much;  I'll  just  have  one  little  drop  more  of  whisky, 
and  then  we'll  go  to  bed." 

And  for  a  time  Betty  was  inclined  to  attach  some  im- 
portance to  that  shrewd  analysis  of  the  situation.  It  had 
revived  that  wondering  doubt  of  hers  as  to  whether  she 
were  indeed  in  love  with  Jacob,  or  only  sorry  for  him,  and 
so  gave  her  opportunity  on  that  ground  to  defend  her  action, 
apart  from  any  consideration  of  that  wearing  ethical  ques- 
tion which  so  perplexed  and  harassed  her.  More  than  once, 
she  almost  decided  that  the  three  months  they  had  agreed 
upon  was  altogether  too  short  a  period  in  which  to  test 
their  feelings  for  one  another. 

She  might  have  suffered  something  of  a  reaction  if  she 
could  have  heard  a  certain  conversation  between  her  partner 
and  Mrs.  Blakey  on  the  following  afternoon,  but  just  at 


82  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

this  time  the  accidents  of  life  were  tending  to  separate  Betty 
and  Jacob.  It  was  as  if  the  unknown  arbiters  of  fate  had 
grown  tired  of  their  effort,  and,  piqued  and  defeated,  were 
endeavouring  to  undo  their  own  work. 

"I  had  a  nice  long  talk  with  Miss  Betty  last  night,  my 
dear,"  Mrs.  Blakey  reported,  "and  I  think  I  may  pride  my- 
self that  I  did  her  a  little  good.  To  tell  you  the  truth, 
dear,  she's  sorry  for  the  man;  so  take  my  advice,  and 
whenever  you  talk  to  her  about  him,  don't  go  telling  her 
she's  unwise  to  think  of  marrying  him  because  they  won't 
have  enough  to  live  on,  for  that's  just  the  way  to  send  her 
rushing  off  to  see  if  he's  drowned  himself  yet  or  not.  She 
isn't  in  love  with  him  yet,  and  the  longer  he's  away  the 
less  she'll  think  of  him;  so,  if  you  take  my  advice,  you'll 
say  as  little  as  maybe  about  him,  and  give  her  a  chance  to 
forget  his  pitying  looks." 

Mrs.  Parmenter  waggled  her  head  and  looked  exceedingly 
wise. 

Curiously  enough,  Jacob  himself  had  never  liked  Mrs. 
Blakey. 

in 

Another  influence  that  tended  to  confirm  Betty  in  her 
relative  placidity  during  the  weeks  that  followed  was  the 
contented  tone  of  Jacob's  letters.  He  seemed  to  be  happy 
in  his  new  surroundings.  He  wrote  of  his  joy  in  the  free- 
dom of  open  country,  of  his  delight  in  the  sea.  He  displayed 
a  new  sense  of  optimism  and  of  strength  that  was  new  to 
her.  He  told  her  that  he  was  working  well  and  steadily, 
that  he  had  written  three  little  sketches  that  had  been  ac- 
cepted by  the  Daily  Post — he  asked  her  to  look  out  for 
them — and  that  he  was  getting  on  splendidly  with  his  novel ; 
and  in  one  letter,  written  at  the  end  of  September,  he  quoted 
with  evident  pride  a  note  he  had  received  from  the  editor 
of  the  Daily  Post,  expressing  satisfaction  with  the  work 
Jacob  had  done,  and  promising  to  send  him  more  books 
for  review.  "I  believe  I  shall  really  be  able  to  save  money 
down  here,"  he  concluded.  "My  total  living  expenses  are 


SEPARATION  83 

under  thirty  shillings  a  week,  and  I'm  making  at  least 
three  pounds." 

"He  seems  perfectly  happy  without  me,"  Betty  reflected ; 
but  the  thought  brought  to  her  no  conviction  of  loneliness. 
She  knew  that  he  was  trying  to  keep  his  promise,  to  leave 
her  uninfluenced  during  those  three  months  of  probation, 
in  order  that  she  might  finally  act  without  persuasion. 
Moreover,  although  his  letters  spoke  openly  of  his  present 
contentment,  were  almost  free  from  any  phrase  of  endear- 
ment— he  had  settled  down  to  a  stereotyped  opening  in 
the  form  of  "Betty,  dear,"  a  form  that  she  copied  in  her 
replies — and  made  no  reference  to  her  joining  him  at  the 
beginning  of  November,  she  read  clearly  enough  the  spirit 
that  informed  his  mood.  It  was  all  part  of  the  assumption 
that  he  would  no  longer  try  to  influence  her;  but  his  ex- 
pectation was  implicit  in  every  line,  and  particularly  plain, 
she  thought,  in  his  references  to  the  saving  of  money.  She 
could  see  him  composing  those  letters  with  conscious  de- 
termination to  avoid  the  one  issue  that  was  ever  present 
in  his  mind;  she  could  hear  him  saying,  "I  will  be  good," 
as  he  had  sometimes  said  it  to  her  when  her  patience  had 
been  nearly  worn  out.  And  the  inference  composed  her, 
permitted  her  to  avoid  for  the  moment  the  necessity  of 
action.  She  found  consolation  in  the  thought  that  she  need 
not  make  instant  decision — it  might  quite  well  be,  she 
thought,  that  the  period  of  three  months  could  be  pro- 
longed. 

But  in  the  first  week  of  October,  she  was  aroused  from 
her  brief  complacency  by  her  realisation  of  the  fact  that 
the  boarding-house  was  once  more  full.  While  it  had 
remained  partly  empty  she  could  persuade  herself  that  it 
was  unreasonable  to  advertise  for  a  partner  to  take  her 
place,  the  conditions  were  unfavourable ;  but  now  she  had 
no  excuse  for  delay,  and  her  innate  honesty  would  not 
permit  her  to  shirk  any  longer  the  fulfilment  of  her  prom- 
ise. She  saw  that  she  must  either  decide  to  give  up  any 
intention  of  joining  Jacob  Stahl  in  Cornwall,  or  make  some 
preparation  for  taking  that  irrevocable  step. 


84  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

And  at  this  critical  moment  of  her  hesitation  she  was 
suddenly  helped  on  her  appointed  road  by  a  letter  from 
her  father.  The  date  of  Hilda's  wedding  had  been  fixed 
for  the  twenty-eighth  of  October,  he  wrote;  and  after  a 
few  platitudes  with  reference  to  that  event,  he  came  to  his 
real  purpose  in  writing,  by  making  a  warm  appeal  in  which 
he  urged  Betty  to  return  and  take  up  again  the  household 
cares  of  Beechcombe  Rectory.  The  reason  upon  which 
he  chiefly  dwelt  was  that  Betty  was  "rather  out  of  her 
sphere"  in  Bloomsbury  (she  pursed  her  mouth  at  that) ; 
and  he  enclosed  a  letter  from  his  sister,  Mrs.  Lynneker, 
temporarily  returned  to  Bournemouth,  a  letter  that  ex- 
plicitly stated  the  assurance  already  hinted,  that  neither 
Betty  nor  Violet  need  have  any  fear  for  the  future  so  far 
as  money  was  concerned.  Aunt  Mary  was  evidently  no 
less  anxious  than  her  brother  that  Betty  should  give  up  her 
boarding-house,  and  she  wondered  how  far  this  anxiety  was 
attributable  to  fear  of  the  lax  observances  so  clearly  con- 
veyed by  her  own  admission  two  months  ago.  She  smiled 
at  the  memory,  while  she  appreciated  the  earnestness  of 
her  aunt's  motives.  Mrs.  Lynneker,  at  least,  had  no  per- 
sonal intent  to  serve. 

The  first  effect  of  these  letters  appeared  to  Betty  as  that 
of  a  further  barrier  building  up  between  her  and  Jacob,  but 
she  recognised  that  a  way  had  been  opened  for  her  to  ap- 
proach Mrs.  Parmenter.  The  chief  cause  for  hesitation, 
the  assignment  of  a  reason  for  breaking  up  the  partner- 
ship, had  been  smoothed  out;  here  was  unassailable  cause. 
Nevertheless,  Betty  suffered  a  twinge  of  conscience  at  the 
reflection  that  she  was  acting  under  false  pretences. 


IV 

She  opened  the  subject  that  same  afternoon  by  pro- 
ducing her  two  letters. 

"I  want  you  to  read  these ;  I  got  them  this  morning,"  she 
said. 

Mrs.  Parmenter  read  them  in  trembling  silence,  and  then, 


SEPARATION  85 

with  dismay  in  her  face,  asked  what  Betty  proposed  to  do. 

"I  thought  of  trying  to  find  you  another  partner,"  Betty 
said. 

Mrs.  Parmenter  folded  her  hands  with  the  resignation 
of  one  confirmed  in  a  disastrous  premonition. 

"I  suppose  it's  what  I  might  have  expected,"  was  how 
shr  phrased  it. 

"I  don't  think  that's  quite  fair,"  remonstrated  Betty. 

Mrs.  Parmenter  misapplied  that  comment,  adapting  it  to 
her  own  grievance.  "One  mustn't  look  for  fairness  in 
this  world,"  she  groaned,  "and  no  one  should  know  it  better 
than  me ;  but  I'm  getting  a  very  old  woman,  and  I've  come 
to  that  time  of  life  when  I  do  look  for  a  little  considera- 
tion." 

Betty  pressed  her  lips  together  and  looked  out  of  the 
window.  "But  I  won't  go,"  she  said,  after  a  short  pause, 
"until  I've  found  you  another  partner." 

"Where?"  snapped  Mrs.  Parmenter. 

"I  thought  of  advertising." 

"And  a  nice  lot  of  answers  you'll  get,  no  doubt,"  re- 
turned the  older  woman.  "And  the  end  of  it'll  be  someone 
coming  in  to  squeeze  all  she  can  out  of  the  place,  and  then 
leaving  me  to  manage  as  best  I  can.  It's  well  enough  for 
you,  Elizabeth.  As  I  see  by  your  aunt's  letter,  you've 
no  call  to  worry  about  the  future ;  but  it's  different  for  me, 
left  at  my  time  of  life  to  the  mercy  of  strangers  who'll 
only  come  here  to  rob  me." 

"Oh,  come!"  protested  Betty.  She  was  thinking  that 
Mrs.  Parmenter's  arguments  against  that  theoretical  mar- 
riage with  Jacob  Stahl  were  shown  to  have  been  of  re- 
markably small  account.  The  old  woman  had  only  one 
interest  to  serve,  and  now  that  sophistry  no  longer  availed 
her,  she  had  shown  her  self-interest  with  astonishing  clear- 
ness. Nevertheless,  Betty  was  more  influenced  by  this 
frank  admission  than  she  had  been  by  any  profession  of 
disinterested  advice.  This  new  attitude  was  at  least  gen- 
uine, and  she  understood  the  old  woman's  fears  and  doubts 


86  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

for  her  future  safety,  and  appreciated  them  at  their  full 
value. 

"I  think  you  might  trust  me  to  do  more  for  you  than 
that,"  she  said.  "You  surely  don't  think  that  I  would  go 
off  and  leave  you  if  I  wasn't  quite  certain  that  we'd  got 
someone  we  could  trust  to  take  my  place." 

Mrs.  Parmenter  began  to  cry.  "How  can  anybody  be 
certain  of  that?"  she  asked  presently. 

"Well,  I  won't  go  until  you  are  satisfied,"  promised  Betty 
in  the  eagerness  of  the  moment,  and  instantly  suffered  a 
qualm  of  doubt  if  she  had  been  wise  in  pledging  herself 
so  specifically.  Beechcombe  and  her  father  could  afford 
to  wait  for  a  year,  if  necessary,  but  she  knew  that  Jacob 
would  be  less  continent,  and  her  partner  might  be  hard  to 
please. 

Mrs.  Parmenter  grasped  the  advantage,  even  as  she 
clung  fondly  to  her  grievance. 

"Yes,  you  must  promise  me  that,  dear,"  she  said,  still 
making  use,  not  without  obvious  reason,  of  her  handker- 
chief, "though  whoever  it  is  you  may  get  to  come  in  your 
place,  it  can't  ever  be  the  same  as  having  you  here."  She 
gulped  as  a  fresh  outburst  of  tears  overcame  her;  a  stranger 
would  have  found  the  sight  of  her  deeply  affecting.  "But 
if  it  must  be,"  she  continued,  speaking  in  spasmodic  gasps, 
"I  suppose  I  must  put  up  with  it — though  I  did  think 
that  you  were  happy  here.  I'm  sure  I've  done  what  I  could. 
.  .  ."  The  thought  of  her  own  devotion  overpowered  her 
completely. 

Betty  fidgeted  uneasily.  She  found  that  she  had  no 
argument  to  advance,  no  consolation  to  offer.  She  realised 
now,  all  too  clearly,  that  she  was  playing  a  part. 

"It  isn't  always  a  blessing  to  be  too  much  wanted,"  she 
remarked  inconsequently,  with  a  thought  of  her  own  private 
trouble. 

Mrs.  Parmenter  controlled  herself  sufficiently  to  take  up 
that  allusion.  "Of  course,  I  know  that  your  father  has  the 
first  claim  on  you,"  she  said,  sniffing  violently,  "and  I 
should  be  the  last  one  to  stand  in  your  way.  It  isn't  to 


SEPARATION  87 

be  expected  that  you'll  have  the  comforts  here  that  you're 
accustomed  to  at  home,  and  I  can't  blame  you  for  wanting 
to  be  at  home  again.  No  one  knows  better  than  I  do  all 
the  troubles  and  worries  of  keeping  a  boarding-house." 

"Oh,  but  it  isn't  that,"  Betty  broke  in.  "You  know  it 
isn't  that.  I  have  been  perfectly  happy  here.  7  don't  want 
to  go.  At  least  .  .  ."  She  broke  off,  conscious  that  she 
was  not  being  quite  honest.  There  had  been  times  when 
she  had  longed  to  leave  Bloomsbury,  and  she  knew  that 
if  that  obstacle  had  not  been  interposed,  she  might  have 
gone  six  months  ago.  But  it  was  not  the  comfort  of 
Beechcombe  that  tempted  her. 

"Well,  there's  your  sister  still  there,"  explained  Mrs. 
Parmenter,  with  a  faint  gleam  of  hope. 

"It's  partly  on  her  account  they  want  me,"  said  Betty. 

"And  I  should  have  thought  your  aunt,  Mrs.  Lynneker, 
might  have  kept  house  for  them." 

"The  place  doesn't  suit  her,"  returned  Betty.  "She's 
never  well  away  from  Bournemouth." 

"Oh,  it's  always  me  that  has  to  suffer!"  said  the  old 
woman.  "I'm  sure  I  ought  to  be  used  to  it  by  this  time, 
I've  had  enough  of  it."  The  stage  of  tears  seemed  to  have 
passed,  and  left  her  in  a  mood  of  resentment. 

"I  don't  see  that  you  need  suffer  in  any  way7'  said  Betty 
gently.  "I  expect  I  shall  be  able  to  find  someone  who'll  be 
much  more  use  than  I  am.  It's  a  splendid  time  to  look  out, 
anyway,  with  the  house  full  and  all  that." 

"I  don't  take  kindly  to  strangers — no  one  does  at  my  age," 
was  the  last  explicit  objection  to  the  proposed  change,  an 
objection  of  considerable  weight,  as  Betty  was  soon  to 
find. 

But  for  the  time  the  change  was  outwardly  accepted  by 
Mrs.  Parmenter  as  being  a  part  of  the  inevitable,  perverse 
scheme  of  her  tortured  life. 

Betty  wrote  Jacob  the  next  day,  and  told  him  that  she 
was  advertising  for  someone  to  take  her  place  in  the  board- 
ing-house. She  knew  that  she  was  pledging  herself  by 
making  the  announcement,  but  she  was  moved  by  a  desire 


88  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

to  test  his  response.    He  had  been  almost  too  self-contained 
in  his  recent  letters. 

The  abounding  enthusiasm  of  his  reply  left  her  in  no 
doubt  as  to  the  intensity  of  his  desire  for  her. 


He  had  so  clearly  permitted  himself  the  relief  of  this 
one  magnificat.  His  letter  rang  with  the  note  of  exulta- 
tion, and  yet  he  still  refrained  from  pressing  his  advan- 
tage. He  made  his  point  unequivocally  as  if  to  hold  what 
he  had  gained,  but  he  pressed  her  no  further. 

She  read  the  letter  half  a  dozen  times  in  the  course  of 
the  morning,  and  something  of  her  old  dread  and  gloom 
returned.  She  could  not  relate  herself  to  life.  It  came 
to  her  again  that  her  very  unselfishness  had  made  her  the 
tool  of  other  people's  comfort.  Her  father,  Mrs.  Par- 
menter,  Jacob,  were  all  bidding  for  her,  and  no  plain  way  of 
self-sacrifice  would  solve  her  doubt.  Whatever  she  did, 
two  parties  out  of  three  must  remain  unsatisfied,  probably 
resentful,  blaming  her  for  any  decision  she  might  make. 
She  seemed  so  utterly  alone,  the  sport  of  another's  desire. 

At  first  her  natural  inclination  was  to  consider  what  action 
of  hers  would  cause  the  least  distress  to  others,  but  while 
it  appeared  in  this  aspect  that  Jacob  must  certainly  be 
sacrificed,  she  found  a  qualification  in  the  fact  that,  while 
he  was  one  against  many,  he  would  suffer  more  intensely 
than  anyone  of  the  circle  of  her  relations,  although  she 
hesitated  noticeably  over  her  consideration  of  Aunt  Mary 
Lynneker. 

And  it  was  the  thought  of  this  exception — curiously 
classed  in  Betty's  mind  with  Jacob  himself  as  one  of  the 
two  people,  who  had  varied  in  some  inexplicable  way  from 
the  general  rule  of  her  experience — that  brought  her  back 
to  that  second  test  of  courage  which  seemed  in  some  ways 
so  admirable.  Weighed  in  that  scale  she  was,  as  she  frankly 
admitted  to  herself,  a  failure.  Already  she  had  shirked 
the  plain  issue.  She  had  not  dared  to  admit  the  true  rea- 


SEPARATION  89 

son  of  her  preparations  for  leaving  Montague  Place.  She 
had  all  the  support  of  worldly  wisdom  on  her  side.  Mrs. 
Parmenter  would  have  probably  informed  Beechcombe,  and 
even  if  Betty  had  kept  back  the  one  damning  fact  that 
Jacob  Stahl  had  a  wife  living,  she  would  have  been  pes- 
tered and  besought  to  give  him  up.  There  would  have 
been  a  fuss,  an  immense  conflict.  But  she  found  no  con- 
solation in  her  regard  of  any  conventional  prudence.  She 
saw  it  truly  as  casuistical,  an  excuse  to  defend  her  cow- 
ardice. The  truth  of  the  matter  was  that  she  could  not 
face  that  immense  conflict.  More  than  that,  she  had  mo- 
ments when  she  realised  why  she  was  afraid,  for  she  did 
herself  the  justice  to  admit  that,  never  until  this  awful 
hesitation,  had  she  lacked  the  courage  of  her  opinions.  She 
failed  here  because  doubt  was  deeply  rooted  in  her  own 
mind.  She  could  not  defend  her  action  to  herself.  All 
her  training,  all  the  influences  and  circumstances  of  her 
life,  hedged  her  in  and  told  her  that  the  thing  she  proposed 
to  do  was  a  violation  of  the  laws  of  God  and  man. 

And  yet  in  her  heart  some  instinct,  some  fount  of  life 
that  no  training  had  been  able  to  stifle,  urged  her  forward 
on  the  forbidden  path.  She  prayed  long  and  shed  many 
tears  in  the  quiet  of  her  own  bedroom,  but  discovered  no 
relief  from  her  difficulty.  Once  she  found  herself  quoting, 
"Father,  remove  this  cup  from  me,"  and  making  applica- 
tion of  the  verse,  was  suddenly  aghast  at  the  sacrilege  of 
her  comparison.  .  .  . 


VI 

PARTNERS  AND  A  PARTNERSHIP 


A  TEMPORARY  distraction  from  her  intimate  prob- 
lem was  provided  by  the  difficult  business  of  choos- 
ing a  partner.  She  had  had  several  answers  to  her  adver- 
tisement in  the  Daily  Telegraph,  but  had  been  forced  to 
admit  that  none  of  the  applicants  were  ideally  suitable.  The 
majority  of  them  were  decayed  gentlewomen,  eager  to  find 
some  support  for  their  declining  years.  They  had  neither 
money  nor  experience,  nor,  unless  volubility  could  be 
counted  an  asset,  any  recommendations  whatever  for  the 
management  of  a  boarding-house.  The  small  minority 
were  more  various,  and  one  of  them,  a  Mrs.  Letchworth, 
had  certain  qualifications  which  seemed  to  Betty  quite  prom- 
ising. 

The  refusal  of  this  applicant  clearly  presented  the  crux 
which  threatened  to  leave  the  problem  permanently  in- 
soluble. 

Mrs.  Letchworth  was  a  plump,  active  widow  of  forty  or 
so,  who  was  even  then  running  a  small  boarding-house  of 
her  own  in  St.  John's  Wood,  but  was  anxious  to  find  a 
more  promising  sphere  for  the  exercise  of  her  talents. 
"St.  John's  Wood  isn't  the  right  part,"  she  explained,  "at 
least,  my  little  place  isn't.  I  haven't  done  so  bad  out  of 
it,  take  it  all  round — anyway,  I  haven't  lost  any  money, 
which  is  more  than  most  of  us  can  say,  I  fancy — but  I  want 
a  bigger  place  for  one  thing,  and  I  want  to  get  more  cen- 
tral." 

She  was  distinctly  practical  in  her  suggestions,  was  will- 
ing to  do  a  share  of  the  cooking,  and  to  bring  in  a  hundred 
pounds  of  capital  on  the  condition  that  she  had  a  full  half 
share  in  the  profits. 

Betty  judged  her  as  eligible,  but  Mrs.  Parmenter  sat 
through  the  interview  with  an  air  of  impenetrable  gloom. 

90 


SEPARATION  91 

"I'm  sorry,  dear,"  she  said,  when  Mrs.  Letchworth  had 
gone;  "but,  of  course,  she  isn't  a  lady,  and  I'm  sure  we 
should  never  get  on  together." 

Betty  drummed  her  fingers  on  the  table  and  reflected  that 
this  sort  of  thing  might  go  on  interminably. 

"There'll  always  be  something,"  she  said. 

Mrs.  Parmenter  gave  indications  of  coming  tears.  "I'm 
sure  I  don't  know  what  has  set  you  against  me,"  she  said. 
"I've  done  everything  I  can ;  I've  agreed  to  let  you  find  me 
another  partner,  little  as  I  like  the  idea  of  any  stranger 
coming  into  the  place;  but  I  don't  think  you  can  expect 
me  to  take  the  very  first  that  offers,  especially  someone 
not  a  lady  like  this  one  that's  just  been,  who  I  never  could 
take  to,  as  you  must  very  well  know."  Her  voice  qua- 
vered, and  her  head  began  to  tremble  violently. 

"Oh,  very  well,"  returned  Betty  gently.  "Well  put  Mrs. 
Letchworth  out  of  it,  and  I  suppose  I  had  better  repeat 
the  advertisement." 

She  sighed  as  she  went  out  of  the  room,  wondering  if 
the  ideal  partner  existed,  and  whether  Mrs.  Parmenter 
would  accept  her  if  she  amazingly  answered  their  adver- 
tisement. 

Betty  was  inclined  to  consider  the  former  speculation 
as  the  more  probable  of  the  two.  Moreover,  she  was  be- 
ginning to  suspect  a  secret  adversary  in  Mrs.  Blakey, 
thereby  adding  another  to  the  list  of  those  who  were  work- 
ing to  serve  their  own  ends,  by  keeping  her  back  from 
the  fulfilment  of  her  destiny.  Nevertheless,  she  found  a 
certain  grim  consolation  in  the  thought  that  the  postpone- 
ment of  that  destiny  was  being  brought  about  through  no 
fault  of  her  own. 

ii 

The  second  advertisement  brought  fewer  replies  than  the 
first.  Indeed,  the  only  possible  partner,  from  a  practical 
point  of  view,  was  a  tall,  overbearing  woman,  who  looked 
with  disapproval  on  everything,  and  left  Mrs.  Parmenter 
in  a  state  of  nervous  collapse. 


92  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

Betty  anticipated  the  inevitable  on  that  occasion  by  an 
instant  condemnation  of  the  departed  tyrant,  and  momen- 
tarily dispirited  by  the  hopelessness  of  her  task,  she  allowed 
three  or  four  days  to  elapse  before  she  made  a  further 
effort. 

It  was  a  letter  from  Jacob  that  stirred  her  to  new  exer- 
tion. The  tone  of  it  differed  little  from  that  of  the  ma- 
jority of  letters  she  had  received  from  him,  but  he  con- 
cluded by  asking :  "Have  you  been  successful  yet  in  finding 
a  partner  for  old  Parmenter?  You  didn't  refer  to  that 
all-important  question  when  you  wrote  last."  Betty  found 
something  pathetic  in  the  restraint  of  that  simple  question. 

She  answered  it  the  same  day,  and  told  him  some  par- 
ticulars of  her  failure;  but  she  gave  him  no  hint  of  Mrs. 
Parmenter's  attitude,  and  explained  that  fresh  advertise- 
ments on  a  somewhat  grander  scale  were  to  be  tried  at 
once.  And  having  thus  made  a  new  decision,  she  drafted 
a  more  elaborate  prospectus  of  her  requirements  and 
despatched  it  to  three  papers,  including  this  time  the  Daily 
Post,  which  she  knew  Jacob  would  see  in  Cornwall. 


in 

Two  days  later,  Alice  announced  that  a  lady  was  in  the 
drawing-room  and  wished  to  see  the  proprietress. 

Mrs.  Parmenter  always  interviewed  possible  boarders, 
but  Betty  had  'arranged,  for  obvious  reasons,  to  be  present 
when  a  prospective  partner  was  in  question;  and  taking  it 
for  granted  that  this  call  was  the  first  answer  to  her  ad- 
vertisement, she  made  a  hasty  toilet  by  discarding  her 
overall,  and  went  up  to  the  drawing-room. 

She  liked  the  visitor  at  first  sight.  She  saw  in  her  some 
curious  physical  resemblance  to  herself,  and  inwardly  she 
came  to  an  instant  decision  that  here,  at  last,  was  someone 
who  would  "have  to  do."  Mrs.  Parmenter's  possible  ob- 
jections must  be  vigorously  countered  if,  as  Betty  con- 
jectured, those  objections  would  still  be  forthcoming. 

"I   suppose   you've   seen   our   advertisement,"   was   her 


SEPARATION  93 

opening,  as  she  came  into  the  room,  and  she  looked  a 
friendly  approval  of  so  promising  an  applicant. 

The  visitor  smiled  responsively.  "No,"  she  said,  "I 
didn't.  I  just  came  on  chance.  I've  been  to  two  other 
places,  but  they  didn't  do  at  all." 

Betty  was  puzzled.     "But  aren't  you  .  .  ."  she  began. 

"Oh  yes,  I  am,"  replied  the  other  one  at  once.  "At  least, 
I'm  looking  for  a  boarding-house.  This  is  a  boarding-house, 
isn't  it?" 

"Yes,  oh!  yes,  it  is,"  Betty  agreed  on  a  note  of  disap- 
pointment. "You  mean  you  are  just  looking  for  rooms?" 

"You  don't  seem  particularly  pleased,"  laughed  the  visi- 
tor. "But  perhaps  you've  nothing  to  do  with  the  place. 
I  asked  for  the  proprietress,  and  I  took  it  for  granted  .  .  ." 

"I  am  the  proprietress — one  of  them,"  put  in  Betty.  "I'm 
sorry  I  made  a  mistake.  I  have  been  advertising  for  a 
partner,  and  I  thought  .  .  ." 

"You  thought  I  should  do?" 

"I'm  sure  you  would  splendidly." 

"I'm  so  sorry.  I  think  I  should  rather  like  to  be  your 
partner." 

"That's  nice  of  you,"  said  Betty.  "But,  anyway,  it  isn't  for 
me.  You  would  have  had  to  be  my  partner's  partner,  you  see." 

"Do  you  mean  that  you're  giving  it  up?" 

Betty  nodded.     "I  want  to,"  she  said. 

"Then  I'm  afraid  we  are  both  going  to  be  disappointed," 
was  the  response.  "For  I  thought  what  a  delightful  land- 
lady you  would  be  the  moment  you  came  into  the  room ;  and 
now  .  .  ." 

"I'm  not  going  at  once,"  said  Betty,  with  a  late  recogni- 
tion of  the  fact  that  one  bedroom  would  be  empty  again 
at  the  end  of  the  week.  "In  fact,  I  can't  go  until  that  real 
partner  presents  herself.  When  did  you  want  to  come?" 

The  visitor's  face  became  suddenly  grave.  "There's  some- 
thing I  want  to  tell  you  first,"  she  said.  "But  perhaps  you 
will  know  my  name.  I'm  called  Mrs.  Philip  Laurence."  She 
lifted  her  firm,  round  chin,  and  gave  out  the  information 
with  a  touch  of  defiance. 


94  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

Betty  shook  her  head.  "No,  I  don't  know,"  she  said. 
"Why  do  you  say  you're  called  Mrs.  Philip  Laurence  ?" 

"Well,  I'm  not  married,  you  see." 

"Oh!"  ejaculated  Betty. 

"I  don't  believe  in  marriage,"  Mrs.  Laurence  continued 
quietly.  "And  I've  been  living  with  Philip  Laurence — he's 
the  poet,  you  know,  but  I  see  you've  never  heard  of  him 
— for  over  two  years  now.  And  I  won't  go  into  any  place 
under  false  pretences.  But  if  you  won't  have  me,  I  really 
think  I  must  give  up  the  idea  of  a  boarding-house.  The 
receptions  I  had  at  the  other  two  places !  You  might  have 
thought  I  was  a  desperate  criminal." 

Betty  was  thinking  rapidly.  She  seemed  to  see  in  this 
quiet,  resolute  little  woman  a  strangely  altered  version 
of  the  essential  Betty  Gale.  Their  spirits  had  touched  from 
the  first  moment  of  meeting;  a  confidence  had  been  es- 
tablished without  the  clumsy  necessity  for  speech.  And 
Betty,  reaching  out  intuitively,  had  found  a  quick  response, 
had  felt  even  before  she  heard  that  declaration  of  inde- 
pendence from  the  bond  of  marriage,  that  she  had  found 
a  friend  who  would  understand  her  present  difficulty. 

"Oh,  can't  we  come  to  some  arrangement  ?"  she  asked  in  a 
tone  of  despair. 

Mrs.  Laurence  smiled.     "An  arrangement?"  she  asked. 

"I  should  so  like  you  to  stay  here  for  a  time,"  explained 
Betty  eagerly.  "It  isn't  that  I  want  another  boarder. 
We're  really  full  up,  all  except  one  room  that  will  be  empty 
on  Saturday.  But  Mrs.  Parmenter — that's  my  partner 
— wouldn't  have  you  if  she  knew;  and,  besides,  there  are 
other  people  here — a  Mrs.  Blakey,  for  instance — who  would 
make  it  impossible.  Must  you  tell  everyone?  Couldn't 
you  just  come  in  and  say  nothing  about  not  being  mar- 
ried? Is  Mr.  Laurence  coming  too?  Would  he  mind?" 

"Oh,  he  wouldn't  mind.    He  would  prefer  it." 

"But  why,  then?" 

"I'm  not  ashamed  of  it,"  said  Mrs.  Laurence.  "Why 
should  I  pretend?" 

Betty  wonderingly  admired  her  courage.     "It  must  be 


SEPARATION  95 

glorious  to  be  so  brave,"  she  said,  and  went  on  quickly: 
"But  there  is  a  reason  in  this  case,  because  if  you  won't 
pretend,  you  won't  be  able  to  come  here,  and  then  I  shall 
lose  you." 

"Oh  no,  you  won't  do  that  in  any  case,"  said  Mrs. 
Laurence,  and  drew  her  chair  nearer  to  Betty's.  "I  felt 
that  we  were  going  to  be  friends  directly  you  came  in,  and 
I  felt,  too,  that  I  have  known  you  for  ever  so  long." 

"Yes,  I  know,"  agreed  Betty,  and  added :  "but  I've  never 
felt  like  that  with  anyone  before." 

They  dwelt  on  that  fascinating  topic  for  some  minutes, 
before  they  returned  to  a  discussion  of  the  practical  prob- 
lem. 

"As  I  said,  Philip  would  sooner  say  nothing  about  it," 
Mrs.  Laurence  explained  when  they  had  come  back  to  the 
question  at  issue.  "He  hates  a  fuss,  and  will  say  anything 
for  the  sake  of  peace.  He  can't  write  when  he's  worried, 
you  see;  but  I've  never  done  it,  and  it  seems  like  the 
beginning  of  the  end  if  you  once  start  that  sort  of  thing." 

Betty  wrinkled  her  forehead.  "If  you  take  rooms  some- 
where else,  it's  sure  to  be  at  the  other  end  of  London," 
she  said,  "and  I  can't  get  out  much  just  now." 

"But  you're  going  away." 

"It  isn't  settled,"  Betty  said,  with  a  faint  show  of  con- 
fusion. "I  want  to  talk  to  you  about  that  sometime." 

"Why  not  now?" 

"We  haven't  time — at  least,  I  haven't,"  was  Betty's  eva- 
sion. She  felt  that  she  could  not  open  that  curious  page 
of  her  history  quite  so  soon.  She  had  shrunk  from  exhibit- 
ing it  at  Beechcombe,  partly  because  she  saw  the  impossi- 
bility of  displaying  by  any  words  of  hers  Jacob's  claim  to 
recognition,  his  right  to  be  judged  and  not  condemned.  And 
now  she  shrank  from  any  hint  of  that  enormous  project  for 
a  reason  that  was  strangely  similar;  she  feared  too  ready 
encouragement,  almost  as  she  had  feared  instant  reproof. 
Neither  could  satisfy  her.  She  wanted  to  understand ;  she 
wanted  advice  that  was  unbiassed. 

"Of  course,  you're  awfully  busy,"  said  Mrs.  Laurence, 


96  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

with  a  slight  access  of  formality.  "I've  been  so  idle  myself 
lately,  one  forgets."  There  was  a  touch  of  wistfulness  in 
her  acknowledgment,  as  if  she  deplored  a  forced  inactivity. 

"You  don't  look  as  if  you  were  idle — ever,"  said  Betty. 
"I  don't  believe  you  are." 

"I've  been  on  the  stage,  you  see,"  Mrs.  Laurence  ex- 
plained; "but  I  wasn't  a  success.  And  now  I've  really 
nothing  to  do  just  at  present." 

"But  you  are  sure  to  find  something  soon,"  urged  Betty, 
suddenly  eager  to  play  the  part  of  a  comforter.  "You'll  get 
another  part,  or  something." 

"I  may,"  agreed  the  other,  without  enthusiasm.  "But 
here  I  am  still  wasting  your  really  valuable  time.  .  .  ." 

"It  doesn't  matter,"  put  in  Betty. 

"But  you  said.  .  .  ." 

"That  I  hadn't  time  for  that.    It's  such  a  long  story." 

"Come  and  tell  it  to  me  this  afternoon,"  Mrs.  Laurence 
said,  with  a  return  to  the  old  note  of  understanding.  "We're 
in  rooms  at  present,  quite  near  here  in  Store  Street,  only 
they  don't  do  very  well — at  all  events,  not  for  Philip.  Do 
come,  and  we  can  talk  everything  over.  If  you  come  early, 
we  shall  be  quite  alone.  Couldn't  you?" 

"Oh  yes,  I  will — I  should  like  to,"  replied  Betty,  with- 
out hesitation.  "And  perhaps  I  can  persuade  you  to  come 
here,  after  all." 

Mrs.  Laurence  smiled  and  shook  her  head.  "Not  on  your 
conditions,"  she  said  as  she  stood  up.  "You  don't  under- 
stand quite.  I'll  explain  it  all  to  you.  Will  you  come  soon 
after  lunch?  About  half -past  two?" 

Betty  said  she  would ;  but  when  her  visitor  had  gone,  she 
had  a  brief  reaction.  She  wondered  if  she  had  been  quite 
wise  in  offering  so  intimate  a  friendship.  Why  had  she 
assumed  so  readily  that  this  unknown  Mrs.  Philip  Laurence, 
an  actress  living  with  a  man  who  was  not  her  husband,  was 
a  desirable  friend,  who  might  be  made  the  first  recipient  of 
so  delicate  a  confidence?  She  had  been,  in  Betty's  opinion, 
rather  overdressed — that  long  fur  coat  she  had  been  wearing 
was,  to  say  the  least  of  it,  unseasonable. 


SEPARATION  97 

IV 

Betty's  first  sight  of  the  Store  Street  apartments  was 
hardly  reassuring.  The  large  sitting-room  into  which  she 
was  shown  by  the  slatternly  maid,  displayed  certain  familiar 
indications  of  the  cheap  lodging.  The  shoddy  furniture 
had  so  little  relation  to  the  generous  proportions  and  high 
ceiling  of  the  room  itself,  but  seemed  to  stand  self-con- 
sciously abashed  by  its  surroundings. 

Freda  Laurence  did  not  keep  her  visitor  waiting.  She 
came  in  at  once  through  one  of  the  great  folding  doors,  that 
covered  nearly  the  whole  of  one  wall  with  their  depressing 
waste  of  drab  surface.  i 

She  was  no  longer  overdressed;  her  fresh  white  blouse, 
with  its  crisp  frilling  at  her  rather  short,  round  neck,  the 
leather  belt  and  plain  serge  skirt,  gave  her  the  air  of  a 
capable  little  business  woman.  Her  manner  added  to  the  ef- 
fect ;  she  was  brisk  and  practical.  "How  nice  of  you  to  come 
so  early!"  she  said.  "Now  we'll  have  a  real  good  talk." 

Betty,  shy  and  constrained,  recognised  in  the  other's  atti- 
tude a  different  expression  of  her  own  nervousness.  "She 
has  something  to  hide,"  Betty  thought.  Her  rapid  criticism 
of  the  room,  added  to  her  observations  of  the  morning,  were 
suddenly  summed  up  in  the  reflection  that  the  Laurences 
had  come  down  in  the  world. 

Neither  of  them  made  any  open  confession  of  her  em- 
barrassment. They  talked  quickly,  almost  eagerly,  on  non- 
committal subjects  for  a  time,  chiefly  on  the  subject  of 
Freda  Laurence's  career  as  an  actress — a  career  that  had 
been  confined  almost  exclusively  to  parts  of  secondary  im- 
portance in  Philip  Laurence's  blank  verse  plays. 

"The  stage  isn't  my  vocation,"  was  Freda's  conclusion. 
"I  can  play  a  few  comedy  parts  decently  enough,  but  I'm  too 
stocky  for  anything  else.  I  shall  probably  be  a  tub  at 
forty." 

Betty  shook  her  head.  "It's  not  that  sort  of  stockiness," 
she  said;  "and  you're  such  a  long  way  off  forty  that  you 
needn't  let  it  worry  you  yet,  need  you  ?" 


98  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

"I'm  twenty-two,"  returned  Freda. 

Betty  had  judged  her  older,  but  she  made  no  comment, 
returning  the  confidence  by  saying,  "I  was  twenty-seven 
last  month." 

Freda  laughed.  "You  thought  I  was  more  than  that, 
didn't  you?"  she  asked.  "I  know  I  look  more.  .  .  ." 

Betty  hesitated,  and  then  said  honestly :  "Yes,  I  thought 
you  were  about  my  age." 

"I've  put  on  five  years  in  the  last  six  months,"  said  Freda ; 
and  then,  to  cover  the  gravity  of  her  admission,  she  went  on 
quickly :  "but  we  won't  talk  about  that,  will  we  ?  You  see, 
I  can't  very  well  just  now ;  and  besides,  I  do  so  want  to  hear 
all  about  you.  I  know  you've  got  something  to  tell  me.  I 
saw  it  in  your  manner  this  morning,  and  it  would  be  so 
splendid  if  we  could  be  friends.  I  haven't  any  real  friends." 

The  first  stiffness  of  their  meeting  was  being  smoothed 
away.  Betty's  objective  criticisms  were  being  overruled  by 
her  intuitive  feeling  of  sympathy  for  this  girl  who  looked 
five  years  more  than  her  age.  There  was  so  little  of  the 
actress  about  her,  so  much  that  was  brave,  courageous  even, 
and  honest. 

"I  think  we  might,"  agreed  Betty,  still  a  little  shy.  "I 
haven't  any  real  friends  either." 

But  when  they  had  confided  their  Christian  names  to  each 
other,  and  the  pledge  of  friendship  had  been  signed  verbally 
and  sealed  with  a  kiss,  Betty  still  hesitated  to  make  full 
confession. 

"I  want  you  to  tell  me,"  she  said,  "why  you  haven't  mar- 
ried Mr.  Laurence.  Is  there  any — any  obstacle?" 

"A  big  one,"  returned  Freda,  smiling;  "but  not  of  the 
sort  you  mean,  I  expect.  We  aren't  either  of  us  married 
already,  for  instance." 

Betty  looked  puzzled.    "But  why,  then  .  .  .   ?"  she  began. 

"Because  I  don't  believe  in  it,"  Freda  said ;  and  her  eyes 
grew  a  little  hard,  the  set  of  her  firm  figure  a  trifle  more 
obstinate.  "I  was  brought  up  not  to  believe  in  marriage." 

"By  your  mother?" 

"No;  my  mother  died  when  I  was  ten.     By  my  father. 


SEPARATION  99 

And  when  I  put  his  principles  into  practice,  he  turned  against 
me." 

"He  didn't  believe  in  them,  then  ?" 

"In  theory."  Freda's  tone  had  a  scornful  ring.  "Only  he 
wants  to  regenerate  the  world  before  he  puts  them  into  prac- 
tice. He  says  we  must  educate  people  first.  To  me  it  always 
seems  like  refusing  to  bathe  until  you've  learnt  to  swim." 

"But  what's  your  objection  to  marriage?"  was  the  per- 
plexed Betty's  next  question. 

"I  don't  know  a  thing  in  favour  of  it,  except  to  provide  a 
home  for  the  children,"  said  Freda,  still  speaking  with  some 
excitement.  "And  they  ought,  of  course,  to  belong  to  the 
mother,  and  they  would  under  any  sensible  agreement,  if 
the  mother  was  provided  for  and  able  to  earn  a  decent  living 
for  herself.  It  all  comes  back  to  the  economic  question,  and 
that's  got  to  be  settled  first,  of  course."  She  paused  a 
moment,  and  then  said:  "You  see,  I'm  an  advocate  for 
woman's  rights,  Betty  dear.  Do  you  hate  me  for  that?" 

"I — I  don't  know  anything  about  it,"  admitted  Betty. 

"But  you're  earning  your  own  living,  aren't  you?" 

"Oh  yes." 

"Perhaps  you  haven't  got  a  home  ?" 

"I  have,  and  they  want  me  to  go  back  there  and  look  after 
the  house." 

"And  why  don't  you?" 

"Sometimes  I  think  I  will,"  Betty  murmured,  a  little 
ashamed  of  the  admission. 

"Oh,  don't,  dear! — please  don't!"  Freda  pleaded,  with 
great  earnestness.  "Be  independent ;  it's  so  splendid.  Don't 
you  feel  prouder  of  yourself  when  you're  doing  something 
that  helps  you  to  be  free?" 

"Oh,  free!"  exclaimed  Betty.  "I  should  be  much  freer 
at  home  in  most  ways." 

"You  wouldn't!  you  wouldn't!"  urged  Freda.  "You 
might  have  more  time  to  spare,  and  that  sort  of  thing,  but 
your  soul  would  be  all  cramped.  You'd  have  to  do  what 
your  people  did,  and  think  what  they  thought.  What  is 
your  father,  by  the  way  ?" 


100  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

"He's  got  a  living  in  Buckinghamshire/'  said  Betty. 

"Then  your  soul  certainly  wouldn't  be  your  own — unless, 
perhaps,  you  believe  in  all  that  sort  of  thing.  Do  you?" 

"Yes.  I  don't  know.  I  did."  Betty  wanted  to  be  quite 
truthful,  but  she  was  quite  uncertain  what  she  believed  at 
that  moment. 

"Which  means  you  don't!"  exclaimed  Freda.  "If  you 
did,  you'd  know." 

"I  did  three  months  ago,"  Betty  asserted. 

"And  then  .  .  .  ?" 

Betty  leaned  forward  in  her  rather  uncomfortable  arm- 
chair and  sighed  desperately.  "I'm  in  a  horrible  muddle!" 
she  admitted. 

"Who  is  he?"  asked  Freda. 

"I  don't  really  know  much  about  him,"  Betty  replied,  quite 
unconscious  of  any  irrelevancy  in  the  question.  "He  came  to 
the  boarding-house  last  Christmas.  But  he's  .  .  .married." 

"Was  his  wife  there  too  ?" 

"Oh  no!"  Betty's  tone  expressed  the  full  extent  of  her 
horror  at  the  suggestion.  "He  hasn't  seen  her  for  years. 
But  she's  religious,  or  something,  and  won't  divorce  him. 
They  weren't  a  bit  happy  ever,"  she  added,  stating  what 
seemed  to  her  the  most  essential  point  of  the  case. 

"What's  his  name?"  asked  Freda,  coming  to  other  facts 
of  importance. 

Betty  hesitated.  The  name,  she  felt,  so  misrepresented 
him.  "Stahl,"  she  said,  and  then  spelt  it.  "I  call  him 
Jimmy,  but  I  believe  his  real  name's  Jacob.  But  he  isn't 
a  Jew,  or  a  German.  He's  quite  English." 

Freda  had  drawn  her  brows  together.  "Jacob  Stahl !"  she 
repeated  thoughtfully,  and  then,  with  a  sudden  burst :  "Oh, 
but  my  dear  Betty,  I  know  him !  Of  course !  Such  a  dear ! 
I  could  have  fallen  in  love  with  him  myself  if  I  hadn't  met 
Philip.  He  was  working  with  Cecil  Barker  in  Camden 
Town  three  years  ago,  and  disappeared  suddenly,  and  I 
never  heard  what  became  of  him.  Oh,  this  is  tremendously 
exciting!  What  a  tiny  place  London  is!" 

Betty's  face  had  brightened  amazingly.    All  the  difficulties 


SEPARATION  101 

of  confession,  of  tedious,  unconvincing  explanations,  had 
been  cleared  away;  and,  what  affected  her  even  more,  she 
suddenly  saw  Jacob  in  a  new  light.  Freda's  brief  summary 
had  presented  him  in  another  aspect.  Betty  saw  him,  not 
as  the  social  outcast  he  must  appear  to  her  father  and  sis- 
ters, or  to  Mrs.  Parmenter,  but  as  an  intimate  member  of 
the  great  human  family.  She  had  heard  from  Jacob  himself 
some  account  of  his  life  with  Cecil  Barker  in  Camden  Town, 
but  this  unprejudiced  description  of  him  as  "a  dear"  gave 
some  familiar  quality  to  his  relations  that  she  had  never 
before  realised. 

"Oh,  how  funny !"  she  exclaimed.  "Did  you  really  know 
him  well?" 

"Hardly  that,"  Freda  said;  "but  I  dare  say  he  would 
remember  me.  Tell  me,  are  you  very  much  in  love  with 
one  another?" 

Betty  blushed  vividly.  "I  don't  know,"  she  said,  hiding 
her  face.  "I  mean,  how  is  one  to  know?"  she  asked. 

"It's  like  the  other  thing,  religion,"  returned  Freda ;  "you 
always  know  when  you've  really  got  it." 

"Do  you  mean  that  I  haven't?"  said  Betty,  on  a  note  of 
perplexity. 

"Tell  me  more  about  it,"  returned  Freda  cautiously. 

And,  somewhat  disjointedly,  with  the  help  of  many  ques- 
tions, Betty  succeeded  in  giving  some  account  of  the  salient 
happenings  of  the  past  ten  months,  a  resume  with,  as  she 
felt,  all  the  accents  in  the  wrong  places,  of  the  little  culmina- 
tions and  reactions  that  had  ended  in  her  promise  to  join 
Jacob  in  Cornwall  at  the  beginning  of  November. 

"It's  only  three  weeks  from  now,"  she  concluded ;  "but 
I  can't  go  until  I've  found  a  partner  for  Mrs.  Parmenter. 
Do  you  think  I  ought  to  go  ?" 

"I  suppose  you'd  go  soon  enough  if  he  weren't  married?" 
asked  Freda. 

"Oh,  I  should  have  married  him  myself  long  ago,  if  it 
hadn't  been  for  that !"  Betty  admitted. 

Freda  smiled,  and  made  a  little  gesture  with  her  hands. 
"There  you  are,"  she  said.  "The  chances  you'd  take  if  it 


102  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

were  to  be  a  perpetual  contract !  You'd  never  think  of  the 
risks  then.  But  now,  because  the  risk  is  a  different  one — 
new  to  you,  anyhow — you  want  to  be,  oh!  so  dreadfully 
sure  before  you'll  take  it." 

Betty  saw  that  this  statement  did  not  include  all  the  diffi- 
culties of  her  particular  problem,  but  she  recognised  a  vein 
of  truth  in  it  that  she  was  not  prepared  to  deny. 

"Do  you  think  I  ought  to  go?"  she  repeated  rather  help- 
lessly. 

Freda  shook  her  head.  "No  one  can  advise  you  about 
that,"  she  said ;  "you  must  decide  for  yourself."  She  paused, 
and  then  added :  "I  should  go  in  your  place.  If  you  don't 
like  it,  you  can  give  it  up.  Or  will  he  want  you  to  have 
children?" 

"He  has  promised  that  there  shan't  be  any — not  yet,  at  all 
events,"  murmured  the  embarrassed  Betty. 

"Then  there's  simply  no  problem,"  was  Freda's  conclusion. 

Betty  could  not  agree  to  that,  but  she  felt  that  her  essential 
difficulty  could  never  be  made  plain  to  Freda.  She  was  no 
less  prejudiced  on  one  side  than  was  Aunt  Mary  on  the 
other.  Each  of  those  two  antagonists  had  been  so  biassed 
by  training  and  the  circumstances  of  her  life,  that  she  was 
unable  to  give  a  free  opinion ;  each  of  them  had  one  measure, 
and  could  use  no  other.  But  if  Betty  was  unable  to  state  her 
personal  problems — that  sheer  reconciliation  of  her  own  con- 
science which  no  confidant  of  hers,  not  even  Jacob  himself, 
seemed  the  least  able  to  understand — she  could  put  another 
side  of  the  question  that  her  companion  seemed  to  have 
overlooked. 

"Oh,  but  there  is !"  she  protested.  "If  I  went  and  lived 
with  him  for  a  year,  and  then  we  agreed  to  part,  I  should 
have  cut  myself  off  from  my  family  and  my  work.  I  could 
not  get  anything  to  do.  I  should  find  it  very  difficult  even 
to  get  a  place  as  a  cook,  without  references." 

Freda  looked  thoughtful.  "I  know,"  she  said.  "I've  got 
that  to  face  very  soon.  But  I  think  it's  worth  while.  We've 
got  to  fight  for  our  opinions  and  our  independence.  I'm 
not  afraid  that  I  shall  starve." 


SEPARATION  103 

"But  I  thought  you  .  .  ."  hesitated  Betty. 

"Yes,  I  know.  I  didn't  mean  to  tell  you.  I  don't  think 
I  ought  to  have  told  you,  but  it  came  out.  However,  let's 
leave  it  at  that;  the  present  arrangement  isn't  permanent, 
and  I  don't  think  it  will  last  much  longer.  The  point  is,  are 
you  afraid  of  risking  the  'afterwards'  that's  facing  me,  and 
might  face  you?  I  wasn't  ever,  and  I'm  not  now." 

"No,"  Betty  admitted,  "that  wouldn't  prevent  my  going." 

"Well,  then  .  .  ."  began  Freda,  but  she  was  interrupted 
by  the  banging  of  the  front  door,  and  the  sound  of  heavy 
footsteps  coming  upstairs.  "There's  Philip,"  she  said.  "I 
didn't  expect  him  quite  so  soon.  You'll  stop  and  have  tea, 
won't  you  ?" 

Before  Betty  could  reply,  Philip  Laurence  blundered  into 
the  room. 


His  great  presence  was  more  in  keeping  with  the  propor- 
tions of  the  apartment  than  any  of  its  present  furnishings. 
He  snatched  off  his  soft  hat  when  he  saw  a  stranger,  and 
bowed  courteously  as  Freda  made  the  formal  introduction. 
Then  he  flung  his  weight  into  one  of  the  cheap  armchairs, 
and  Betty's  nerves  jumped,  she  felt  so  sure  that  something 
must  give  way;  and  she  saw  that  even  Freda  cast  a  quick 
appraising  glance  at  the  overburdened  piece  of  furniture. 

Laurence  himself  appeared  quite  oblivious  of  the  covert 
piece  of  feminine  criticism. 

"You've  nothing  to  do  with  the  stage,  I  hope,  Miss  Gale," 
he  said,  grunting  slightly,  as  he  sought  to  accommodate  his 
large  person  to  the  obviously  inadequate  limits  of  his  chair. 
"It's  the  most  cursed  profession  in  the  world !" 

Betty  was  not  at  her  ease.  She  had  disliked  Philip 
Laurence  at  first  sight,  and  had  been  prepared  to  dislike  him 
before  he  entered  the  room. 

"No,  I've  never  had  anything  to  do  with  the  stage,"  she 
said  nervously.  She  wanted  to  be  gone,  but  she  felt  that 
she  must  wait  now  for  tea. 

Laurence  rolled  on  to  the  other  arm  of  his  chair,  which 


104.  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

creaked  loudly.  "Good,"  he  said,  in  a  warm,  encouraging 
voice.  "Very  good.  I  implore  you  never  to  think  of  it  as 
a  profession." 

"I  never  should,"  returned  Betty.  She  wondered  if  he 
assumed  that  all  young  women  had  an  ambition  to  go  on 
the  stage. 

"Philip's  taking  it  for  granted  that  any  friend  of  mine 
must  have  something  to  do  with  the  profession,"  put  in 
Freda,  understanding  Betty's  thought. 

"We  meet  so  many  of  them,"  Laurence  explained. 
"They're  always  turning  up  on  the  least  excuse  to  badger 
me  for  a  part.  You  know  the  sort  of  girl,  Miss  Gale — no 
talent,  no  appearance,  no  voice,  but  they've  a  God-sent 
inspiration  that  they  can  act." 

"I'm  afraid  I  don't  know  anything  about  it,"  murmured 
Betty.  "I  haven't  .  .  ." 

"So  much  the  better  for  you,"  Laurence  interrupted. 
"It's  a  tremendous  relief  to  talk  to  someone  who  knows 
nothing  about  the  stage.  I'm  sick  to  death  of  the  whole 
business.  I  was  lured  into  it  by  the  hope  of  making  money 
quickly.  My  play,  'The  Independents' — you  saw  it,  no 
doubt — was  a  succ&s  d'estime,  and  I  spent  golden  hopes  on 
it;  I  thought  I  saw  my  way  to  writing  a  play  that  should 
be  a  succes  fou.  You  know,  of  course,  how  one  gets  led  on 
into  the  belief  that  the  next  play  is  really  going  to  do  the 
trick,  and  that  one  will  have  enough  money  afterwards  to 
do  good  work.  But  I've  made  up  my  mind  now  that  this 
thing  I'm  rehearsing  shall  be  the  last,  whether  it  succeeds  or 
not.  I'm  going  to  get  away  from  all  these  false  values  be- 
fore it's  too  late.  It's  a  damnable  thing  to  be  the  slave 
of  popularity,  and  you  are  perfectly  right  in  condemning 
me  for  having  prostituted  my  gifts,  such  as  they  are,  for 
so  long;  but  you  see  how  it  has  been  with  me.  I've  had 
Freda  to  think  of  as  well  as  myself.  Thank  God,  she  agrees 
with  me  that  I've  been  a  fool  to  waste  myself  on  trying  to 
appeal  to  this  sentimental,  uneducated  theatre-public  we 
have  in  London !  You  can't  teach  them ;  they  haven't  the 
wit  to  learn."  And  he  continued  to  abuse  the  theatre  and 


SEPARATION  105 

all  connected  with  it,  rolling  uneasily  in  the  groaning  chair. 

Betty,  with  slightly  drooping  head,  listened  patiently,  con- 
tent so  long  as  she  was  not  called  upon  to  provide  conversa- 
tion. She  was  untouched  by  Laurence's  constant  tributes 
to  her  own  assumed  knowledge  and  clarity  of  judgment,  but 
she  found  something  rather  fine  and  stirring  in  the  declara- 
tion of  his  independence.  His  talk  rolled  on  while  the  lodg- 
ing-house servant  set  the  tea-tray,  and  hardly  paused  as  he 
somewhat  greedily  ate  and  drank.  He  demanded  nothing 
more  from  his  hearer  than  an  assumption  of  intelligent  in- 
terest, and  he  talked  of  nothing  but  the  theatre-public's 
failure  to  appreciate  his  own  work,  and  of  his  final  irrevo- 
cable determination  to  be  true  to  his  own  best  instincts,  and 
to  starve  in  a  garret  rather  than  prostitute  his  gifts — "such 
as  they  are"  was  his  invariable  qualification — to  such  base 
uses. 

Through  it  all  Freda  sat  with  a  faint  air  of  boredom. 
Once  or  twice  she  put  in  a  remark  that  tentatively  questioned 
the  accuracy  of  Laurence's  statements  of  fact,  but  he  either 
ignored  the  interruption  or  beat  down  her  feeble  contradic- 
tion with  a  fresh  bludgeon  of  argument.  It  seemed  to  Betty 
that  Freda  must  have  heard  all  these  criticisms  and  asser- 
tions many  times  before,  and  thus  doubted  the  quality  and 
the  integrity  of  them.  If  they  were  not  wearisomely  familiar 
to  her,  she  certainly  displayed  a  strange  lack  of  sympathy. 

But  all  Laurence's  long,  redundant  discussion  was  ad- 
dressed most  markedly  to  his  visitor;  Freda  was  only 
dragged  in  as  evidence  or  as  an  excuse  for  the  prostitution 
of  his  talents,  and  there  were  moments  when  his  exagger- 
ated statements  of  respect  for  Betty's  opinion  and  the  con- 
centration of  his  effort  to  create,  as  it  seemed,  an  effect  of 
his  personality  and  ambitions  produced  in  her  a  feeling  of 
almost  physical  discomfort.  She  felt  as  if  he  were  making 
love  to  her  before  her  new  friend,  before  the  woman  who 
passed  as  his  wife. 

That  impression  was  not  lessened  by  his  manner  of  saying 
good-bye,  when  at  last  she  was  able  to  extricate  herself 
from  the  toils  of  his  conversation.  His  compliments  on  her 


106  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

understanding  were  so  florid,  and  he  insisted,  despite  her 
weak  protestations,  in  accompanying  her  down  to  the  front 
door. 

She  shuddered  and  gave  herself  a  vehement  shake  when 
she  was  safely  out  in  the  street.  She  felt  as  if  she  had  just 
thankfully  awakened  from  a  particularly  unpleasant  dream. 


VI 

As  she  walked  home  through  the  gloom  of  the  Blooms- 
bury  streets,  her  thoughts  were  distracted  from  her  own 
problem  by  her  consideration  of  those  two  people  in  the 
Store  Street  lodgings.  She  had  come  into  touch  with  a 
tragedy  of  a  kind  familiar  by  repute,  but  hitherto  quite  out- 
side her  personal  experience.  This  was  a  drama  precisely 
similar  in  kind  to  those  she  had  seen  acted  upon  the  stage 
or  described  in  the  pages  of  a  novel,  but  until  it  was  viewed 
in  perspective,  it  wore  the  commonplace  air  of  every  day. 
She  had  observed  a  single  scene  full  of  suggestion,  but  so 
separated  from  the  story  that  all  the  broad  aspects  of  ro- 
mance had  been  lost.  The  past  she  might,  in  some  fashion, 
reconstruct  for  herself,  but  the  future  was  hidden,  and 
the  simple  incident  had  been  presented  with  no  didactic 
preparations  or  hint  of  inevitable  poetic  justice.  Freda  was, 
Betty  reflected,  the  same  woman  she  had  seen  that  morning, 
the  woman  for  whom  she  had  felt  a  strangely  spontaneous 
affection.  This  recognition  of  Philip  Laurence  as  a  gross 
egotist,  who  inspired  her  with  a  peculiar  aversion,  in  no  way 
altered  the  character  of  the  woman  with  whom  he  was  living. 
And  yet,  to  Betty,  Freda  had  appeared  utterly  changed  in 
the  last  hour.  She  had  been  a  human  being,  and  now  she 
had  fallen  into  a  category.  Betty  was  seeing  her  with  the 
eyes  of  a  Mrs.  Lynneker  or  a  Mrs.  Parmenter,  condemning 
her  because  she  was  so  obviously  ranked  with  a  well-de- 
scribed class.  If  Philip  Laurence  had  been  of  another  type, 
if  they  had  not  both  been  connected  with  that  disreputable 
profession  of  the  stage,  they  might  have  figured  more  hu- 
manly; but  for  the  moment,  at  least,  they  were  presented 


SEPARATION  107 

in  a  romantic  setting,  and  so  had  become  ranged  with  the 
whole  type  pictured  in  romance — the  type  that  must  suffer 
for  its  sinning. 

Nevertheless,  Betty  knew,  even  in  the  very  heart  of  her 
reaction,  that  she  and  Freda  would  meet  again.  Freda's 
judgment  was  descending ;  that  unblessed  union  was  on  the 
verge  of  dissolution ;  and  whatever  Betty's  private  criticism, 
she  was  determined  to  do  anything  that  lay  in  her  power  to 
help  Freda  when  she  was  in  trouble.  She  might  come,  then, 
to  the  boarding-house  in  Montague  Place,  and  if  she  were 
in  financial  low  water,  she  would  not  be  troubled  to  pay 
any  rent.  That  could  be  arranged  without  any  difficulty. 

By  the  time  she  reached  home,  Betty  had  forgotten  her 
criticisms  in  her  eager  planning  to  help,  and  as  soon  as  she 
was  in  her  own  room  she  wrote  an  impulsive  letter  to  Freda, 
begging  her  to  come  to  Montague  Place  when  she  gave  up 
the  Store  Street  lodgings.  "You  can  do  it  awfully  cheaply 
here,  if  you  don't  mind  a  small  room,"  was  Betty's  way  of 
suggesting  what  was  in  her  mind. 

Meanwhile  she  had  to  plunge  again  into  this  difficult 
business  of  finding  a  partner.  Mrs.  Parmenter  told  her 
that  two  "quite  impossible"  applicants  had  called  that  after- 
noon. 

Also  Betty  remembered  with  a  touch  of  impatience,  that 
she  would  have  to  go  down  to  Beechcombe  on  the  following 
Thursday  for  Hilda's  wedding.  That  prospect  gave  her  no 
pleasure.  Already  she  felt  cut  off  from  her  own  family,  and 
her  disinclination  to  attend  the  ceremony  was  aggravated 
by  the  fact  that  she  ought  to  get  a  new  dress  for  the  occa- 
sion, and  that  she  could  not  afford  it. 

She  settled  the  latter  question  by  deciding  that  she  must 
make  the  best  of  what  she  had.  What  did  it  matter  if  she 
appeared  dowdy,  or  if  she  offended  them  all?  In  a  very  few 
weeks  she  would  offend  them  much  more,  and  it  might  be 
the  last  time  that  she  "would  see  any  of  them. 

She  sighed  rather  hopelessly,  as  if  life  were  becoming  too 
much  for  her.  That  cloud  of  dread  had  formed  again,  more 
gloomy,  more  inevitable  than  ever  before. 


VII 
A  WEDDING 


BETTY'S  last  advertisement  produced  many  applicants, 
but  not  the  ideal  partner.  The  answers  fell  into  two 
main  categories — the  well-bred  incompetent  and  the  vulgar 
practical — and  while  the  vulgar  incompetent  formed  a  small 
but  recognisable  sub-group,  the  fourth  combination  was  not 
represented  by  a  single  inquiry.  Outside  these  four  con- 
siderable divisions  were  the  "perfect  idiots" — a  despairing 
classification  of  Betty's — whose  replies  had  little  or  no  bear- 
ing on  the  subject  of  the  advertisement. 

Mrs.  Parmenter  had  assumed  a  manner  of  resolute  for- 
bearance that  expressed  both  her  willingness  to  go  through 
the  farce  with  exemplary  patience,  and  her  calm  certainty 
that  the  whole  business  was  foredoomed  to  failure.  She 
read  through  the  letters  that  came  with  a  quivering  sigh  of 
despair,  as  if  some  last  wild  hope  had  been  crushed,  and 
when  she  was  called  in  to  decide  upon  the  claims  of  some 
nearly  possible  applicant  who  had  been  interviewed  by 
Betty,  the  old  lady  had  a  half-eager  air,  as  if  she  were  doing 
her  utmost  to  find  those  hypothetical  qualifications  she  so 
unavailingly  desired. 

Betty  looked  her  despair,  but  she  was  conscious  that  her 
very  despair  had  its  alleviations ;  and  there  were  times  when 
she  was  inclined  to  shift  her  burden  to  the  shoulders  of 
Fate,  declaring  that  she  had  done  her  best,  and  that  nothing 
more  could  be  expected  of  her.  She  still  clung  somewhat 
desperately  to  the  idea  that  she  could  not  leave  the  board- 
ing-house until  she  had  found  someone  to  take  her  place. 

A  letter  she  received  from  Jacob  on  the  day  before  her 
sister's  wedding  helped  to  confirm  her  in  this  attitude  of 

108 


SEPARATION  109 

resignation.  She  had  written  to  him,  giving  him  an  account 
of  her  meeting  with  Freda,  and  also  telling  him  of  the  many 
replies  stimulated  by  her  last  advertisement.  The  general 
tone  of  her  letter  had  been  encouraging,  she  thought;  she 
imagined  him  cheered,  and  prepared  to  wait  a  few  more 
weeks  if  necessary  now  that  the  climax  was  assured.  His 
answer,  however,  exhibited  no  mark  of  cheerfulness.  "Of 
course  I  remember  Miss  Cairns,"  he  wrote,  "and  her  affair 
with  Laurence ;  but  I  hope  you  won't  compare  me  with  him. 
I  never  thought  that  affair  would  be  a  success ;  he  isn't  the 
sort  of  man  who  could  stick  to  one  woman  for  long.  I'm 
sorry  for  her,  of  course ;  but  she  must  have  known  the  sort 
of  man  he  was — he  had  it  written  all  over  him.  I  liked 
her;  she  was  a  little  like  you  in  some  ways."  His  only 
comment  on  the  advertisement  was,  "I'm  sorry  you  are  hav- 
ing so  much  trouble  about  finding  a  partner;  it  does  seem 
rather  hopeless,  doesn't  it?" 

Betty  wondered  whether  Jacob's  desire  for  her  presence 
in  Cornwall  was  beginning  to  weaken,  and  if  he  could  not 
now  be  persuaded  to  wait  at  least  until  the  spring?  The 
thought  of  that  possible  procrastination  came  as  a  great 
relief  to  her,  and  when  she  answered  his  letter  that  after- 
noon, she  admitted  the  failure  of  her  great  advertisement 
by  way  of  preparing  him  for  further  delay. 

And  so,  with  a  mind  rather  more  at  ease,  she  faced  the 
ordeal  of  the  Beechcombe  ceremony. 


ii 

She  found  a  hired  waggonette  that  had  been  sent  both  to 
meet  her  and  another  guest  expected  by  the  up-train,  due  in 
another  twenty  minutes.  The  driver  of  the  waggonette  was 
a  stranger  to  Betty.  "I  was  told  to  bring  two  fares,  miss, 
one  by  the  down  and  the  other  by  the  up,"  was  all  the  infor- 
mation he  could  give  in  answer  to  her  question  as  to  the 
name  of  the  second  visitor. 

She  was  chilled  at  the  outset.  Her  common  sense  told  her 
that  the  Rectory  was  in  the  throes  of  preparation,  and  also 


110  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

that  an  economy  of  conveyances  was  no  doubt  very  neces- 
sary. But  something  within  her — she  wondered  if  it  were 
the  consciousness  of  her  own  guilty  intentions — persisted  in 
urging  that  "they"  might  have  given  her  some  kind  of  wel- 
come. She  had  a  sense  of  being  neglected,  and  all  the 
reasonable  explanations  that  so  admirably  excused  this  ap- 
parent neglect  failed  to  alter  her  sense  of  it. 

She  would  have  walked  on,  but  it  had  begun  to  rain,  and 
she  did  not  wish  further  to  accentuate  her  dowdiness  by 
arriving  mud-stained  and  draggled.  Already  she  was  bit- 
terly regretting  that  she  had  not  bought  a  new  dress  for  the 
occasion. 

Her  incipient  distress  was  not  relieved  when  she  discov- 
ered that  the  second  passenger  was  the  "Northampton 
aunt,"  as  they  called  her  at  home — Mr.  Gale's  sister-in-law, 
who  had  a  house  that  was  quite  distinctively  a  "place"  near 
Kingsthorpe.  Betty  had  not  seen  her  for  many  years,  but 
she  had  a  vivid  recollection  of  her  as  an  overpowering,  in- 
tolerant woman,  who  condescended  on  rare  occasions  to 
admit  the  relationship  between  her  late  husband  and  the 
Rector  of  Beechcombe.  The  money  had  been  all  her  own, 
and  she  had  lifted  her  husband  from  an  ignominious  curacy 
to  a  leisured  retirement  at  the  Kingsthorpe  place. 

She  greeted  Betty  with  the  carelessness  of  assured  posi- 
tion. "Let  me  see,  it's  Violet,  isn't  it?"  she  asked,  and  ap- 
parently overlooking  the  offered  correction,  persisted  in  the 
use  of  that  name.  Her  conversation  during  the  drive  was 
almost  entirely  confined  to  an  account  of  the  difficulties  of 
her  journey.  It  appeared  that  she  had  come  a  cross-country 
route  by  way  of  Cheddington  and  Aylesbury,  and  that  the 
train  service  had  been  "disgraceful." 

Only  once  did  she  branch  from  the  absorbing  topic  to 
make  a  brief  reference  to  the  object  for  which  she  had  so 
incomprehensively  suffered  all  this  inconvenience. 

"Let  me  see,  what  is  the  bridegroom's  name  ?"  she  asked. 

"Phelps,"  replied  Betty. 

"One  of  the  Hertfordshire  people?"  asked  Mrs.  Gale, 
with  a  first  flicker  of  interest. 


SEPARATION  111 

"I  have  no  idea,"  Betty  was  compelled  to  admit,  and  felt 
more  insignificant  and  middle-class  than  ever. 

And  when  she  had  arrived  at  the  Rectory  and  could  evade 
further  conversation  with  the  overpowering  Mrs.  Gale, 
Betty  still  felt  hopelessly  out  of  it,  as  she  phrased  her  sense 
of  pariahism.  There  was  nothing  for  her  to  do.  If  she 
could  have  gone  into  the  kitchen  and  helped  to  prepare  the 
somewhat  ostentatious  luncheon,  she  would  have  been 
happy.  But  all  the  arrangements  had  been  made,  and  were 
being  overlooked  by  Violet.  Her  father  and  Mrs.  Lynneker 
were  fully  occupied  with  Mrs.  Gale  in  the  drawing-room, 
and  Hilda  had  momentarily  fled  from  the  bustle  of  prepara- 
tions, and  gone  up  the  village  with  two  cousins  from  Ox- 
ford, who  had  come  earlier  in  the  morning  by  way  of  High 
Wycombe. 

After  a  brief  hesitation,  Betty  decided  that  she  also  would 
find  some  sanctuary  from  the  hurrying  urgency  that  per- 
vaded the  whole  house.  The  eddy  of  her  choice  was  "the 
girls'  "  bedroom,  where  she  found  Hilda's  wedding-dress 
displayed  full  length  upon  the  bed. 

Betty  examined  this  symbol  with  a  faint,  inexplicable 
sense  of  repulsion.  It  was  a  pretty  dress,  not  too  elaborate, 
although  the  prevailing  fashion  had  demanded  a  reasonable 
flouncing  of  the  rather  full  skirt.  But  outstretched  there, 
empty  and  prostrate,  the  dress  had  no  humanity,  and  its 
symbolism  seemed  part  of  the  idea  of  sacrifice.  Betty  won- 
dered vaguely  what  her  sister's  feelings  were  for  this  almost 
unknown  Mr.  Phelps,  whether  she  had  ever  considered  the 
significance  of  the  rite  of  marriage? 

She  was  still  frowning  perplexedly  over  the  tangle  of  her 
thoughts  when  she  heard  Hilda's  voice  in  the  garden  below, 
and  a  minute  or  two  later,  the  young  bride-elect  raced  up  the 
stairs  and  burst  into  the  room. 

"Hullo,  Bet,  how  lovely  to  find  you  here !"  was  her  greet- 
ing. "They  never  told  me  you'd  come."  Her  pleasure  was 
unmistakably  genuine,  as  was  also  the  warmth  of  her  em- 
brace, and  Betty  suddenly  thrilled  to  an  awakening  of 


THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

emotional  interest  in  all  that  had  till  now  appeared  so  ortho- 
dox and  mechanical. 

They  had  hardly  drawn  apart  when  the  luncheon-bell 
rang. 

"Oh,  bother !  Look  here,  darling,"  Hilda  broke  out,  "I'm 
not  going  down;  they're  going  to  bring  me  something  up 
here.  I'm  supposed  to  be  dressing,  of  course.  Stay  and 
have  something  to  eat  here  with  me,  will  you,  dear?  And 
then  you  can  help  me  to  dress." 

"Rather,"  assented  Betty  eagerly.  "But  what  about 
Violet?"  she  added.  "Won't  she  want  to  help  you?" 

"Oh,  she'll  come  up  later,"  Hilda  said,  with  a  hint  of  im- 
patience in  her  voice.  "She's  got  to  be  in  for  the  lunch,  of 
course,  and  Heaven  knows  how  long  they'll  talk  over  it  with 
the  Northampton  aunt  and  all." 

"I'd  love  to  have  it  up  here  with  you,  dear,"  Betty  re- 
turned. "I  was  only  afraid  ...  I  didn't  want  to  be  in  the 
way,  I  mean,  if  you  and  Violet  .  .  ." 

"Thafs  all  right.  You  needn't  worry  about  that,"  replied 
Hilda.  She  was  plainly  in  a  state  of  considerable  nervous 
excitement,  but  Betty  guessed  that  there  had  been  some 
estrangement  between  her  two  younger  sisters  since  she  had 
seen  them  nearly  three  months  ago.  Possibly,  that  recog- 
nisably  acid  strain  in  Violet  had  been  more  in  evidence  since 
the  engagement.  It  might  have  been  difficult  for  her  to  hide 
a  little  spinsterish  jealousy  of  Hilda's  success;  and  Hilda, 
no  doubt,  had  found  new  interests,  had  been  partly  absorbed 
in  a  new  life,  new  hopes,  that  Violet  could  not  share  with 
her. 

in 

"I  suppose  you're  frightfully  happy?"  Betty  asked  pres- 
ently. She  put  the  question  quietly,  controlling  by  her  tone 
and  expression  the  somewhat  hectic  hilarity  of  her  sister's 
mood. 

"What  do  you  mean  by  that,  Bet?"  Hilda  returned, 
dropping  her  voice  from  the  high  note  of  excitement  on 
which  it  had  been  pitched  since  she  entered  the  room. 


SEPARATION  113 

"Nothing,"  Betty  said.  "Only  just  that — you  are  happy, 
aren't  you  ?" 

"Oh,  of  course  I  am,"  Hilda  said.  She  propped  her  chin 
in  the  cup  of  her  two  hands  and  stared  past  Betty  at  the 
window  behind  her. 

"You're  tremendously  in  love  with  him?"  continued  Betty 
earnestly. 

Hilda  nodded  vehemently,  and  then  said :  "Why  do  you 
ask  like  that,  Bet?  Don't  you  think  I  am?" 

"Oh  yes,  as  far  as  I  know.  I've  never  seen  you  together, 
you  see,"  Betty  explained.  "Only  I  wanted  you  to  tell  me. 
You  seem  to  be  so  excited." 

Hilda  frowned,  and  the  superficial  likeness  between  the 
two  sisters  became  more  remarkable.  "You're  such  a  seri- 
ous mouse,  Bet,"  she  said ;  and  then  she  got  up  and  came  and 
sat  at  her  sister's  feet,  and  leaned  her  head  against  her. 

"It  isn't  that,  dear,"  she  went  on,  when  she  had  settled 
herself  in  her  new  position.  "But  you  understand,  don't 
you,  how  I  hate  to-day?" 

"Tell  me,"  murmured  Betty,  bending  affectionately  over 
her. 

"I  can  tell  you,"  Hilda  said  in  a  low  voice.  "Violet 
wouldn't  understand.  She's  been  funny,  rather,  lately.  We 
haven't  been  nearly  such  good  pals  since  I've  been  engaged. 
But  you're  such  a  quiet  old  darling!  I  have  missed  you 
awfully,  Bet,  really." 

Betty's  arm  tightened  about  her  sister's  shoulder,  and  she 
leaned  her  cheek  on  Hilda's  hair.  "Dear  old  girl !"  she  said. 
"Tell  me  why  you  hate  to-day  so  much." 

"It's  being  stuck  up  to  be  stared  at  and  made  a  show  of," 
Hilda  explained.  "I  wish  Frank  and  I  could  have  just  run 
away  somewhere  together,  and  got  married  quietly  after- 
wards with  no  one  knowing  anything  about  it.  I — I  feel  so 
ashamed  somehow,  Bet.  I  was  reading  through  the  service 
this  morning  before  breakfast.  I've  often  heard  it,  of 
course,  but  I  never  understood  it  before.  When  you  think 
of  yourself  saying  these  things  it's  so  different.  And — and 
it's  rather  horrid,  Bet,  in  some  ways,  I  think.  I  don't  much 


THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

like  other  people  looking  at  me  while  father's  reading  all 
that  about — you  know.  I  feel  as  if  getting  married  is  just 
something  that  only  concerns  Frank  and  me,  and  I  hate  the 
thought  of  them,  that  dreadful  Aunt  Gale  and  all,  staring 
at  me.  I  met  her  in  the  hall  when  I  came  in,  and  she  looked 
at  me  as  if  I  were  up  for  sale — sort  of  sizing  me  up,  you 
know.  And  the  two  Oxford  cousins  were  funny,  I  thought. 
I  dare  say  it's  all  imagination,  but  oh !  Bet  darling,  I  do  wish 
it  was  all  over.  I  simply  hate  dressing  up  for  the  beastly 
ceremony !" 

"I  understand ;  I  should  hate  it,  too,"  said  Betty  quietly. 
A  sudden  impulse  stirred  her  to  confide  in  Hilda ;  they  had 
never  been  so  much  in  sympathy  as  at  that  moment. 

"I  think  if  I  were  going  to — to  get  married,  I  should  run 
away,"  she  said,  "and — and  perhaps  chance  the  wedding 
afterwards." 

"Oh,  I  didn't  mean  that!"  said  Hilda,  straightening  her- 
self, and  turning,  so  that  she  could  look  up  into  her  sister's 
face.  "You  don't  think  I  meant  anything  wicked  like  that, 
Bet?" 

"You  think  that  would  be  wicked  ?"  asked  Betty. 
"Well,  of  course,"  returned  Hilda,  with  absolute  con- 
viction. 

"But  suppose  you  and  Frank  couldn't  get  married,"  Betty 
hesitated.  "I  mean  suppose  there  was  some  obstacle  in  the 
way.  .  .  ." 

"How  could  there  be  ?"  Hilda  interpolated. 
"Well,  suppose  he  had  been  married  very  young  to  a  hor- 
rid sort  of  a  woman,  and  that  they  couldn't  get  on,  and  had 
lived  apart  for  years,  would  you  run  off  with  him  and  chance 
getting  married  afterwards  ?" 

Hilda  had  returned  to  her  thoughtful  attitude ;  she  was 
sitting  on  the  floor,  her  knees  drawn  up  far  enough  to  sup- 
port her  elbows,  her  chin  resting  on  her  knuckles.  She  was 
evidently  trying  to  consider  the  question  with  a  fine  detach- 
ment. "I  don't  think  Frank  would  ask  me  to,"  was  her 
verdict. 

"But  if  he  did?" 


SEPARATION  115 

"He  wouldn't  be  Frank  if  he  did  It  would  all  be  dif- 
ferent." 

It  was  an  unsatisfactory  answer,  but  enough  for  Betty. 
She  saw  that  her  own  troubles  must  wait.  She  would  not 
intrude  them  on  a  Hilda  so  naturally  absorbed  in  her  own 
affairs.  But  that  was  not  all.  As  Mrs.  Blakey  had  said, 
Betty  was  one  of  those  dear  kind  creatures  who  were  always 
looking  after  other  people.  She  had  to  sacrifice  herself. 
The  others — she  must  add  Hilda  to  the  growing  list — were 
eager  for  her  sympathy  and  support,  but  they  did  not  want 
to  be  bothered  with  her  personal  worries. 

"I  say,  old  girl,  it's  after  half-past  one ;  oughtn't  you  to  be 
getting  dressed  ?"  she  suggested. 

"Great  Scott,  yes !"  agreed  Hilda,  jumping  to  her  feet. 
"If  we're  not  married  by  three  o'clock  it  isn't  legal.  Come 
on!" 

IV 

Sitting  in  the  Rectory  pew  an  hour  later,  Betty's  thoughts 
returned  to  that  conversation  in  the  bedroom.  Next  to  her 
Mrs.  Gale,  absolved  by  her  social  position  from  anything 
more  than  a  formal  reverence,  stared  critically  about  her; 
and  farther  down,  one  of  the  Oxford  cousins  was  holding  a 
whispered  conversation  with  Violet.  None  of  them  seemed 
to  feel  that  this  brief  interval  of  waiting  was  a  solemn  in- 
troduction to  the  ceremony  during  which  two  young  people, 
almost  unknown  to  one  another,  were  about  to  take  the  most 
binding  vows  of  fidelity  before  God,  pledging  their  lives 
blindly  to  a  future  of  which  they  had  not  taken,  were  not 
able  to  take,  serious  thought.  That  most  certainly  was  not 
the  attitude  of  her  overbearing  aunt,  nor  probably  of  any 
other  member  of  the  rustling  congregation.  This  affair  to 
them  was  a  show,  the  most  interesting  incident  in  the  life  of 
a  young  woman,  for  it  was  round  her  that  all  the  interest 
centred ;  the  man,  despite  all  conventions,  is  in  some  way 
exempted  from  the  letter  of  the  contract.  Marriage  is  by 
common  consent  a  less  important  affair  in  his  life;  he  can, 
in  one  particular,  generally  avoid  that  vow  of  constancy.  It 


116  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

seemed  to  Betty  that  the  ritual  of  the  affair  was,  perhaps,  as 
Jacob  had  said,  a  farce,  and  if  it  were  not  performed  by 
three  o'clock  it  would  be  null  and  void — Hilda  and  her  lover 
would  be  no  more  married  in  the  eyes  of  the  law  than  Jacob 
and  Betty  down  in  Cornwall,  making  their  vows  to  each 
other  without  any  witnesses  to  record  the  fact  in  some  dingy 
ledger.  Surely  before  God  it  would  be  the  result  that 
counted,  the  keeping  of  the  promise,  not  the  form  and  man- 
ner in  which  the  promise  was  made.  .  .  . 

If  only  she  were  not  such  a  coward,  if  she  did  not  fear  so 
foolishly  the  strictures  of  all  these  people.  Probably  there 
was  not  a  single  person  in  this  big  congregation  who  would 
care  to  speak  to  her  if  she  omitted  this  ceremony  before  go- 
ing to  live  with  Jacob.  The  Oxford  boy  cousin,  perhaps, 
might  think  it  "rather  sporting,"  and  look  unpleasantly  sly, 
as  if  she  had  put  herself  in  the  class  of  women  with  whom 
certain  familiarities  were  possible.  .  .  . 

At  last  an  unrecognisable  Hilda  came  up  the  aisle  on  the 
arm  of  her  uncle — their  mother's  brother — upon  whom  had 
devolved  the  honour  of  "giving  away"  the  bride ;  they  were 
followed  by  two  little  girl  bridesmaids,  self-consciously  pre- 
occupied with  the  management  of  the  satin  train  they  were 
carrying.  "What  did  all  these  rites  mean  ?"  Betty  wondered. 
She  had  begun  to  examine  them  for  the  first  time  in  her  life ; 
she  had  not  the  knowledge  to  trace  them  back  to  their  dim 
origins,  but  vaguely  she  recognised  some  idea  of  a  bargain 
in  them  all.  In  the  old  days,  she  seemed  to  remember,  mar- 
riage had  been  a  matter  of  arrangement  between  the  parents, 
of  arrangement  and  barter.  .  .  . 

She  listened  intelligently  to  the  words  of  the  service,  fol- 
lowing it  in  her  Prayer-Book.  Hilda's  comments  in  the 
bedroom  had  stirred  her  curiosity.  She  had  attended  many 
weddings,  but  she  had  to  confess  that  the  actual  meaning 
and  purport  of  the  ritual  was  unknown  to  her.  And  here, 
too,  she  found  again  that  hint  of  bargaining,  that  and  the 
admission  that  marriage  was  a  kind  of  licensed  and  permis- 
sible fornication.  .  .  . 

Her  father  took  the  service,  making  the  most  of  his  fine 


SEPARATION  117 

voice,  and  the  bridegroom's  father — he  had  come  down  with 
his  son,  and  Betty  had  not  seen  him  before — -afterwards 
gave  a  short  address  from  the  altar-rails.  He  was  an  oldish 
man  with  a  white  beard,  and  he  confined  himself  to  a  few 
pompous  remarks  on  the  sanctity  of  the  marriage  vows. 
Betty  was  no  wiser  for  the  address,  and  she  wondered  if 
old  Mr.  Phelps  had  ever  examined  the  inner  meaning  of  the 
marriage  service.  He  was  reputed,  she  remembered,  to  be 
a  great  classical  scholar. 


She  walked  back  to  the  station  after  the  reception,  glad 
to  get  away  from  the  crowd  of  chattering  relations.  She 
had  hardly  seen  Hilda  again.  When  they  had  left  the 
church,  Betty  had  been  fully  occupied  for  a  time  by  the 
many  relatives  and  friends  whom  she  had  not  spoken  to 
before.  She  had  meant  to  go  upstairs  with  Hilda  while  she 
changed  her  dress,  but  that  design  had  been  frustrated. 

And  later,  when  Hilda  had  come  down  to  say  good-bye, 
she  had  evidently  been  only  too  anxious  to  escape.  "You're 
coming  to  stay  with  us,  Bet,  aren't  you  ?"  she  had  said  hur- 
riedly as  she  kissed  Betty;  and  Betty  had  nodded,  too  con- 
fused with  the  general  bustle  even  to  wonder  whether  she 
would  ever  be  able  to  accept  that  invitation,  or  if  Hilda 
would  care  to  renew  it  if  her  sister  disgraced  the  family. 

But  she  thought  of  that  in  the  train,  and  it  seemed  to  her 
that  the  loss  of  Hilda  would  be  almost  the  only  thing  that 
mattered.  She  had  felt  so  separated  from  all  that  crowd. 
And  had  she  not  already  disgraced  the  family — in  the  opin- 
ion of  the  Northampton  aunt,  for  instance — by  running  a 
boarding-house  ? 

She  had  been  terribly  "out  of  it,"  she  reflected,  and  she 
felt  lonely  and  miserable.  There  were  only  two  people  she 
could  confide  in  now — Freda  Laurence  and  Jacob.  The 
first  of  them,  at  least,  she  might  see  very  soon.  And,  in- 
deed, she  saw  her  sooner  than  she  expected,  for  when  she 
arrived  in  Montague  Place  Mrs.  Parmenter  greeted  her 


118  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

with  the  announcement  that  a '  new  boarder  had  come  in 
to  take  "Mr.  Stoll's  old  room.  A  Miss  Cairns,  dear;  she 
says  she  knows  you." 

Betty  went  straight  up  to  Freda's  bedroom. 

"Oh,  how  nice  to  find  you  here!"  she  said.  "Have  you 
really  come  to  stay?  I'm  so  glad!" 


VIII 
THE  AMAZING  LETTER 


FREDA'S  affair  with  Philip  Laurence  was,  she  confessed, 
finally  settled.  "We  have  agreed  to  part,"  she  told 
Betty.  "It  has  been  inevitable  for  a  long  time  now,  but  we 
dragged  on  for  one  reason  or  another." 

She  would  give  no  details.  "It  isn't  that  I  mind  talking 
about  it,"  she  said,  "so  far  as  the  sentimental  side  of  it 
goes;  but  it  would  not  be  fair  to  him." 

Betty  did  not  press  her  questions.  She  had  no  doubt 
that  Freda  was  justified  in  breaking  the  relation,  and  in 
refusing  the  offer  of  marriage  which  Philip  Laurence 
seemed  astoundingly  to  have  made  a  few  days  before  the 
final  separation. 

Freda's  presence  in  the  house  made  a  great  difference  to 
Betty.  She  had,  for  the  first  time,  someone  to  whom  she 
could  confide  an  intelligible  statement  of  her  perplexities, 
someone  who  was  glad  to  listen.  The  effect  of  this  friend- 
ship, however,  was  not  primarily  to  help  the  cause  of  the 
desolate  Jacob. 

Freda's  prejudice  was  of  another  type  to  that  of  Beech- 
combe.  In  this  matter  she  could  keep  an  open  mind.  She 
had  no  desire  to  bring  these  two  together  that  was  com- 
parable to  Beechcombe's  desire  to  keep  them  apart.  Her 
first  question  as  to  Betty's  feeling  for  Jacob  had  not  been 
satisfactorily  answered,  and  before  she  had  been  in  the 
house  a  week,  Mrs.  Blakey,  shrewd  enough  to  sight  a  new 
ally,  cornered  Freda  in  the  drawing-room  one  evening,  and 
in  her  own  plain  manner  gave  her  a  version  of  the  affair  that 
strengthened  Freda's  earlier  inference. 

"She's  sorry  for  him,  Miss  Cairns,"  was  the  substance  of 

119 


120  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

Mrs.  Blakey's  opinion ;  and  she  was  careful  to  say  no  word 
in  disparagement  of  Jacob  that  might  come  back  to  Betty, 
and  so  put  weight  in  what  was,  according  to  Mrs.  Blakey, 
the  wrong  scale. 

Mrs.  Parmenter  followed  the  admirable  lead  given  to 
her,  and  probably  under  instruction  from  her  superior  in 
tact,  took  up  much  the  same  line  of  argument,  only  adding 
on  her  own  account  that  she  was  sure  Betty  would  never 
be  happy  with  Mr.  Stoll,  for  reasons  that  were  not  explicitly 
stated. 

One  curious  result  of  these  intrigues — a  result  that  seemed 
at  the  time  to  have  no  bearing  on  the  essential  question — 
was  the  receiving  of  Freda  both  by  Mrs.  Parmenter  and 
Mrs.  Blakey  into  a  confidence  that  distinguished  her  posi- 
tion from  that  of  the  ordinary  boarder.  She  had  given 
these  two  ladies  no  hint  of  her  failing  from  their  standard 
of  righteousness — she  had  promised  Betty  to  make  that 
reserve — and  they  had,  in  Mrs.  Blakey's  phrase,  "taken  to 
her  from  the  first" ;  and  they  took  to  her  even  more  when 
they  found  that  she  was  working  on  their  side. 

And  these  influences  were  being  supported  by  another  that 
was,  it  seemed  to  Betty,  even  more  important — Jacob  had  al- 
most ceased  to  write  to  her. 

He  replied  after  an  interval  of  five  days — an  interval 
filled  for  her  with  many  qualms  of  anxiety — to  the  letter 
in  which  she  had  confessed  the  failure  of  her  advertisement ; 
but  he  made  no  reference  to  that  most  important  admission. 
Betty  had  expected  protests  and  pleadings,  and  when  her 
relief  of  being  spared  was  over,  she  had  a  shiver  of  doubt. 
She  was  not  expert  enough  in  her  criticism  of  the  literary 
manner  to  note  that  this  letter  of  Jacob's  was  even  more 
carelessly  worded  than  that  which  had  preceded  it;  but  she 
did  not  fail  to  read  a  certain  feebleness  of  spirit  into  the 
matter  of  his  unusually  short  account  of  his  doings.  Her 
inference — a  perfectly  natural  one — was  that  he  no  longer 
desired  her  presence  with  the  same  fervour,  and  that  the 
writing  of  letters  to  her  was  becoming  a  mere  duty — an  in- 
ference that  found  her  curiously  resentful.  She  answered 


SEPARATION 

him  at  once,  and  although  she  made  no  reference  to  her 
future  plans,  the  tone  was  fonder  than  it  had  been  since 
the  first  month  of  his  absence. 

To  that  letter  she  received  no  answer  for  over  a  week,  and 
then  it  was  no  more  than  a  few  lines,  plainly  written  in  a 
hurry. 

She  was  piqued.  If  he  had  reproached  her,  she  would 
have  been  stricken  with  the  consciousness  that  she  had  not 
kept  her  promise.  But  she  felt  that  she  could  put  but  one 
construction  on  this  apparent  carelessness.  He  wanted  to 
get  out  of  it,  she  thought,  and  she  found  the  reflection  un- 
believably painful.  She  carried  it  about  with  her,  a  secret 
wound,  suddenly  aware  that  now  the  sense  of  compulsion 
was  removed,  something  else  had  gone  with  it — something 
desirable  that  had  been  the  source  of  a  new  joy  in  life. 

She  tried  to  keep  it  from  Freda,  but  that  proved  to  be 
impossible. 

ii 

"I  think  you  might  tell  me  what's  happened,"  was  the 
first  hint  Betty  received  that  her  trouble  was  not  to  be  dis- 
guised by  mere  silence. 

They  were  in  the  kitchen ;  Freda  had  been  taking  lessons 
in  cooking.  "Failing  the  stage,"  she  had  said,  "it's  a  way  of 
making  a  living.  I  believe  in  making  myself  capable  in  as 
many  ways  as  possible." 

"Nothing,"  Betty  replied  with  attempted  surprise.  "Noth- 
ing's happened.  Why?" 

"Of  course  something's  happened,"  Freda  said.  "Has  he 
written  ?  Is  he  pressing  you  to  run  away  ?" 

The  intermittent  presence  of  Alice  interfered  with  any 
confession  at  that  time,  but  later  that  evening  Betty  went 
up  and  sat  in  her  friend's  bedroom,  which,  small  as  it  was, 
had  the  advantage  of  being  supplied  with  a  gas  fire. 

"Don't  you  want  to  tell  me  about  it,  old  girl?"  Freda 
asked  irrelevantly  at  the  first  pause.  "Is  he  trying  to  per- 
suade you  ?" 


122  THE  'INVISIBLE    EVENT 

Betty  shook  her  head.    "Anything  but,"  she  murmured. 

"You  don't  mean  that  ...  ?"  said  Freda.  Their  conver- 
sation was  very  elliptical  now,  when  they  were  alone  to- 
gether. The  smallest  intimation  was  sufficient. 

"I  don't  know,"  Betty  returned,  staring  very  hard  at  the 
dull  glow  of  the  gas  fire.  "He  has  hardly  troubled  to  write 
the  last  fortnight,  and  then  not  a  word  about  my  going  to 
him." 

"You  don't  think  that  he's  found  anyone  else?" 

Betty  shivered  slightly.  "It  seems  impossible  to  me, 
somehow,"  she  said.  "But  I  suppose  it  isn't.  Men  do, 
don't  they?" 

"Some,"  returned  Freda,  obviously  making  an  application 
in  her  own  mind. 

"He  didn't  seem  a  bit  like  that,"  Betty  continued.  "I 
thought  .  .  ." 

"Are  you  only  judging  by  his  letter  ?"  Freda  asked. 

"Oh  yes." 

"Has  he  said  anything  at  all  definite?" 

"He  hasn't  said  anything.  That's  what's  so  funny.  The 
three  months  are  up,  and  I  thought  he  would  be  furious.  I 
wrote  a  fortnight  ago,  telling  him  that  I  couldn't  find  a 
partner,  and  I  expected  .  .  ."  Her  voice  trembled,  and  she 
stopped  abruptly. 

Freda  made  no  reply,  and  for  a  minute  or  two  they  sat 
in  silence,  neither  looking  at  the  other. 

"I  don't  care,"  said  Betty  at  last,  looking  very  determined. 

"Oughtn't  you  to  give  him  some  chance  to  explain  him- 
self?" returned  Freda. 

"Why  should  I  ?" 

"You're  only  guessing,  are  you?" 

"What  else  could  it  mean?  If  you  knew  how  he  used  to 
implore  me.  .  .  ." 

"I  do,  more  or  less,  don't  I  ?  But  you  promised  you  would 
go  to  him  at  the  end  of  three  months.  He  may  feel  now  that 
you  must  go  of  your  own  free  will.  Perhaps  he  thinks  that 
if  you  don't  care  enough  for  him  to  keep  your  promise,  it 
would  be  better  that  you  shouldn't  go  at  all." 


SEPARATION  123 

"I  know ;  it  sounds  all  right,  but  it  isn't  like  him  somehow, 
except  just  at  the  last.  Then  he  was  rather  like  that.  But 
the  tone  of  his  letter  is  so  different.  .  .  ." 

"What  are  you  going  to  do  ?"  asked  Freda,  after  another 
pause. 

"I  can't  do  anything,  can  I  ?"  said  Betty,  with  a  tiny  shrug 
of  her  shoulders.  "Except  wait,"  she  added. 

"Aren't  you  going  to  write?" 

"Not  yet,  anyway." 

"Then  he'll  think  you  don't  care." 

"Well,  if  he  thinks  that.  .  .  ."  Betty  paused,  and  then 
went  on  bravely:  "I  don't  know  that  I  do  care." 

"You  do,"  Freda  said.  "I  thought  you  didn't  much. 
But  you  keep  yourself  in  so." 

"I've  had  to,"  Betty  admitted. 

"I  think  you  ought  to  write,"  said  Freda. 

"I  shall  wait  for  a  few  days  in  any  case,"  was  Betty's 
decision.  "I — I  don't  know  what  to  say." 

"Why  not  ask  him  what's  the  matter?" 

"Oh,  I  can't!"  was  all  Betty's  explanation;  but  Freda 
seemed  to  understand  it. 

in 

A  week  later  her  letter  was  still  unwritten,  and  she  had 
had  no  further  word  from  Jacob.  A  certain  stubborn  resig- 
nation was  coming  to  her,  but  she  felt  that  she  could  not 
endure  the  suspense.  Every  morning  she  found  excuses  for 
him;  and  while  she  eagerly  awaited  the  coming  of  the  first 
post — the  letters  from  him  never  came  by  any  other — she 
found  half  a  dozen  versions  to  explain  his  silence  and  his 
change  of  tone.  Then  the  sound  of  that  declamatory 
double-knock  would  reverberate  through  the  house,  and  she 
would  go  up  from  the  kitchen  to  find  one  of  the  German 
boarders  sorting  the  letters  in  the  hall,  and  would  be  met 
by  the  invariable  "Nozzing  for  you,  Miss  Gale,"  and  always 
she  suffered  a  reaction.  It  was  as  if  that  daily  failure  was 
perpetually  a  fresh  insult  to  her.  She  had  an  unpleasant 
feeling  that  the  smiling  Mr.  Meyer  must  guess  the  reason 


124  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

of  her  expectation,  and  that  he  grinned  exultingly  over  her 
disappointment.  For  two  days  now  she  had  been  unable 
to  face  him,  and  had  waited  until  she  had  heard  him  go 
into  the  dining-room,  before  she  had  dared  miserably  to 
investigate  the  letters  on  the  hall-stand. 

She  wrote  at  last  in  order  to  end  the  suspense,  and  she 
said  nothing  to  Freda  until  the  letter  was  posted. 

"I  suggested  that  we  should  wait  another  six  months," 
she  said,  when  she  went  to  Freda's  room  that  evening  and 
confessed  that  she  had  delivered  her  ultimatum. 

"Was  that  all?"  Freda  asked. 

"Practically,"  Betty  said.  "I  was  frightfully  stiff  and 
formal.  I  said  that  I  hadn't  heard  from  him  for  some  time, 
and  I  didn't  know  whether  he  remembered  that  the  three 
months  were  up,  and  that  I  hadn't  been  able  to  find  a  part- 
ner yet  for  Mrs.  Parmenter,  and  hadn't  we  better  wait.  I 
suggested  six  months.  I  wanted  to  give  him  a  chance  to 
back  out  of  it  if  he  wished  to.  He  can  easily  now.  He  has 
only  got  to  say  'yes,'  and  not  write  any  more." 

"Do  you  think  he  would  do  that?  Wouldn't  it  be  rather 
a  sneaky  way  of  getting  out  of  it?" 

"I  don't  know,"  said  Betty  defiantly.  "I  thought  I 
understood  him,  but  evidently  I  didn't.  If  I  had  written  like 
that  a  month  ago,  I  should  have  expected  him  to  come  up 
by  the  next  train.  But  I  don't  now." 

"Anyhow,  he's  sure  to  write,"  suggested  Freda. 

"I  should  think  so,"  agreed  Betty,  a  little  doubtfully. 

"I  can't  help  thinking  you're  doing  him  an  injustice  some- 
where," said  Freda  thoughtfully,  after  a  pause.  "It's  quite 
natural,  of  course.  You've  got  a  reaction.  But  I  shouldn't 
think  he's  a  sneak.  I  know  I  didn't  see  much  of  him,  but  he 
didn't  strike  me  a  bit  like  that." 

"Oh,  well,  we  shall  soon  see,"  returned  Betty.  She  felt 
cold  and  heartless  now  that  she  had  taken  a  definite  step. 
Nothing  seemed  to  matter. 

For  quite  a  long  time  they  sat  without  speaking,  and  then 
Betty  said  suddenly,  "This  was  his  room."  The  announce- 
ment appeared  to  her  a  tremendous  confession,  a  final  dis- 


SEPARATION  125 

solution  of  the  last  bond  between  her  and  Jacob.  Freda 
got  up  quickly  and  put  her  arms  round  her.  "Oh,  Betty, 
old  girl,  you  mustn't  take  it  like  that!"  she  said. 

"I  don't  care,"  Betty  protested,  holding  herself  very 
stiffly ;  and  then  the  strength  seemed  to  go  out  of  her ;  she 
clung  weakly  to  Freda,  and  her  whole  body  trembled. 
"What's  the  good  of  caring?"  she  tried  to  say,  but  the  words 
would  not  come;  they  were  too  poignant  to  be  spoken. 
She  felt  that  her  life  was  ended,  and  the  realisation  broke 
down  the  last  remnant  of  her  determined  self-control.  She 
began  to  cry  hopelessly.  "I  don't  care,"  she  repeated  fool- 
ishly, between  her  sobs. 

Freda,  trying  to  comfort  her,  felt  a  sudden  hatred  for 
Jacob.  He  appeared  as  another  representative  of  the  brutal 
sex  that  had  always  misused  women. 


IV 

Betty  ignored  the  post  next  morning.  All  that  day  she 
felt  detached  from  life.  She  had  made  her  confession.  She 
did  not  care,  she  had  protested,  and  Jacob  was  but  one 
item  in  all  the  dull,  uninteresting  world  that  offered  no  as- 
pect of  attractiveness.  She  thought  her  curious  love-affair 
— the  only  one  she  had  ever  had — was  finished  for  ever,  and 
she  was  glad,  she  imagined,  that  all  the  strain  and  anxiety  of 
it  was  over.  She  was  free  now  either  to  stay  on  in  Monta- 
gue Place  or  to  return  to  Beechcombe,  and  although  neither 
prospect  appeared  even  remotely  inviting  at  that  moment, 
she  had,  at  least,  the  consolation  of  knowing  that  she  need 
not  act  under  any  compulsion. 

Yet  her  very  emancipation  wore  a  barren  air.  It  was  as 
if  she  had  come  from  the  confinement  of  a  walled  garden 
out  into  some  bleak,  open  space.  Life  itself  appeared  wide 
and  desolate,  so  arid  that  the  freedom  of  her  choice  became 
valueless.  She  might  go  whither  she  would,  but  there  was 
no  place  to  which  she  wanted  to  go.  From  her  present 
standpoint,  one  horizon  was  as  little  attractive  as  another. 
Subconsciously  she  missed  the  stimulus  of  the  thrust  she  had 


126  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

so  long  resisted ;  and  even  on  that  day  her  thoughts  returned 
— with  a  vacant  desire  for  the  compulsion  she  had  in  one 
form  almost  thankfully  abandoned — to  the  contemplation 
of  the  religion  that  had  become  somewhat  remote  from  her 
during  the  past  ten  months.  Having  regained  her  inde- 
pendence, she  was  eager  once  again  to  abandon  it.  ... 

She  went  straight  into  the  dining-room  next  morning, 
without  a  glance  at  the  stand  in  the  hall  on  which  the  letters 
were  generally  left.  But  even  before  she  entered  the  room, 
she  knew  that  Jacob  had  answered  her. 

For  one  moment  she  believed  that  her  intuition  had  failed 
her,  for  the  letter  she  saw  lying  beside  her  plate  differed 
materially  from  the  one  she  had  seen  so  clearly  in  imagina- 
tion. This  was  a  bulging  foolscap  envelope,  and  in  the 
instant  that  elapsed  while  she  moved  from  the  door  to  the 
table,  the  thought  leapt  bright  and  clear  to  her  mind  that 
Jacob  had  returned  her  letters  to  her,  that  this  was  the 
final  seal  of  their  parting. 

And  with  that  thought  she  realised  that  her  coldness,  the 
strange  anaesthesia  of  all  emotions  she  had  suffered  the  day 
before,  had  been  unreal,  had  been  induced  by  her  own 
imaginings.  Now  she  was  to  suffer  the  real  pain  to  which 
her  former  stillness  had  been  no  more  than  an  introduction. 
In  future  she  would  be  truly  dead  and  cold  through  all  the 
endless  days  that  stretched  inimitably  out  to  some  unknown, 
undesired  end.  .  .  . 

Mr.  Meyer,  standing  on  the  hearthrug,  was  the  only  other 
occupant  of  the  room  as  yet. 

"You  haf  to-day  your  letter,  Miss  Gale,"  he  said  genially. 
"I  bring  it  in  for  you." 

"Oh,  thank  you;  it's  nothing  important,"  Betty  said 
quietly.  "Hasn't  Alice  sent  up  breakfast  yet?  I'll  go  and 
hurry  her  up." 

The  excuse  came  to  her  automatically.  She  picked  up 
the  letter  and  left  the  room,  unheeding  Mr.  Meyer's  sur- 
prised expostulation  that  the  breakfast  was  already  on  the 
table. 

She  went  straight  to  her  own  room  and  locked  herself  in. 


SEPARATION  187 

She  could  not  bear  the  thought  that  anyone  should  guess 
her  humiliation.  But  when  she  was  alone  and  safe  from 
interruption,  she  hesitated.  She  realised  then  that  the- con- 
tents of  the  envelope  in  her  hand  could  not  be  her  own 
letters  returned  to  her ;  it  was  the  wrong  shape ;  it  was  too 
smooth  and  regular  for  a  package  of  that  sort. 

At  last,  fumblingly,  she  tore  it  open. 

She  found  half  a  dozen  sheets  of  foolscap,  closely  cov- 
ered with  writing.  At  the  top  of  the  first  sheet  he  had  writ- 
ten and  twice  underlined,  "Read  my  letter  first." 


She  found  the  letter  still  in  the  envelope. 

"After  I  got  your  letter,"  he  had  begun,  without  any  con- 
ventional form  of  address,  "I  decided  to  send  you  the 
enclosed.  It  is  a  sort  of  diary  that  I  have  been  keeping  for 
the  last  fortnight.  I  finished  it  to-day.  I  never  meant  to 
send  it  to  you,  and  I  feel  that  I  ought  not  to  send  it  now; 
but  I  must.  Don't  let  it  influence  you  more  than  you  can 
help.  I  dare  say  much  of  it  is  very  silly,  and  probably  I  shall 
be  all  right  again  in  a  few  months."  After  that  he  had 
written  again,  "I  never  meant  to  send  it  to  you,"  and  had 
run  his  pen  through  the  sentence  and  concluded:  "You 
must  do  what  you  think  is  right." 

Betty  frowned  in  perplexity.  What  did  he  mean  by  say- 
ing that  he  would  "probably  be  all  right  again  in  a  few 
months"?  Had  he  been  ill?  Was  he  still  ill?  She  read 
the  letter  again  before  she  turned  to  the  "diary." 

"To-day  has  been  the  worst  day  yet,"  was  the  opening 
sentence,  "a  day  of  more  unhappiness  and  loneliness  and 
longing  for  you  than  was  yesterday  or  Tuesday.  There  has 
been  an  intolerable  wind  and  a  fine  mist  of  rain  that  never- 
theless stings  like  sand.  I  went  out  for  a  few  minutes  up 
to  the  pillar-box,  and  was  glad  to  get  back.  But  as  though 
it  were  not  enough  that  I  cannot  get  out,  more  personal 
inconvenience  has  been  heaped  upon  me  by  the  fact  that 
the  fire  has  smoked  unbearably,  so  that  I  have  had  no  peace 


128  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

or  comfort.  It  is  these  small  annoyances  which,  if  they 
persist,  drive  one  to  desperation.  I  have  been  cursing  fate 
and  destiny  and  all  the  gods  there  be  this  afternoon.  And 
as  I  cursed  I  realised  my  tiny  impotence.  I  saw  myself  as 
some  useless,  petulant  insect,  as  the  smallest  of  midges  vent- 
ing its  fury  on  an  elephant.  It  is  this  sense  of  impotence 
which  brings  one  to  the  last  despair.  I  can't  write  or  read. 
I  am  sick  of  myself  and  my  thoughts  and  my  futility.  And 
this  putting  of  my  mood  on  to  paper  without  any  trouble 
to  choose  my  phrases  and  avoid  repetition  is  the  only  relief 
I  can  find.  I  am  thinking  of  it,  Betty,  at  this  moment,  as  a 
letter  to  you.  I  know,  of  course,  that  I  shall  never  send  it, 
whatever  happens.  It  would  be  too  much  like  a  feeble 
whining  to  you  to  have  pity  on  me.  I  don't  want  to  get  you 
like  that.  But  it  is  a  relief  to  address  you  in  some  way, 
to  feel  that  I  am  writing  to  you,  although  that  other  person 
who  is  and  isn't  me  knows  about  and  tries  to  remind  me 
that  I'm  not  writing  to  you  at  all.  I  don't  care;  I  shall 
think  of  this  as  a  sort  of  dreadful  last  hope.  I  change 
my  mind  every  five  minutes.  Perhaps  I  shall  send  it  to  you 
in  one  eventuality.  I  shall  if  I  want  to.  Nothing  could 
possibly  be  worse  than  this.  The  woman  has  washed  up 
now  and  gone.  I  shan't  see  another  soul  until  ten  o'clock 
to-morrow  morning — sixteen  hours;  not  that  I  ..." 

Betty  turned  the  page  quickly,  but  could  find  no  con- 
tinuation of  the  unfinished  sentence.  Apparently  one  or 
more  sheets  was  missing.  Then  her  eye  caught  the  words 
at  the  head  of  a  page :  "Realise  that  the  only  thing  is  for 
you  to  come  of  your  own  free  will,"  and  she  went  on  from 
that  point;  ".  .  .  but  will  you  ever  come?  It  is  so  impos- 
sible for  me  to  believe  that  nothing  but  a  sense  of  duty  to  the 
Parmenter  woman  keeps  you  back.  She  is  old  and  selfish, 
and,  of  course,  she  wants  you  (who  wouldn't?)  ;  but  it  isn't 
credible  that  no  one  could  be  found  to  take  your  place  as 
the  manager  of  a  rotten  boarding-house.  It's  just  that  the 
old  beast  doen't  like  a  change.  She's  got  you,  and  she  means 
to  keep  you  if  she  can,  and  she  doesn't  care  a  hang  what's 
best  for  you.  Perhaps  you  think  I  don't  either.  I  admit  it 


SEPARATION  129 

looks  like  that.  But  I  do,  although  that's  something  that 
you  can't  understand  yet.  You  can't  believe  that  I  really 
think  that  it's  better  to  do  what  you  think  is  wicked  than 
kill  your  soul  by  routine  and  narrowness,  as  you  will  if  you 
go  on  at  that  beastly  place.  I  know  we  should  be  happy 
together.  It's  a  good  thing  to  have  to  face  the  world,  face 
people,  and  tell  them  you  don't  care  a  hang  what  they  think 
of  you.  It  braces  you.  It's  a  tonic.  And  that  brings  me 
back  to  my  own  weakness.  I  do  so  want  you  to  come  of 
your  own  free  will,  Betty  dear.  I  ought  to  have  learnt,  I 
suppose,  that  if  I  want  you  I  must  take  you,  order  you,  make 
you  come,  and  then  shoulder  the  responsibility.  But  for 
the  most  part  I  can't  see  it  like  that.  I  feel  that  in  this 
particular  thing  it  is  necessary  for  you  to  choose  for  your- 
self. If  I  make  you  come — by  sending  you  this,  for  in- 
stance— you  would  never  forget  it.  You  would  always  have 
the  feeling  that  you  had  been  forced  into  coming,  and  that 
would  stand  between  us;  it  would  prevent  you  from  ever 
loving  me.  .  .  ." 

Betty  was  startled  to  see  a  drop  of  water  splash  on  to 
the  page  she  was  reading.  She  was  not  aware  that  she  had 
been  crying.  She  lifted  her  head,  and  the  room  seemed  to  be 
ringing  still  with  Jacob's  voice. 

She  put  down  the  manuscript,  and  buried  her  face  in  her 
hands.  She  could  see  him  and  hear  him.  He  seemed  to 
be  actually  present  with  her  there  in  her  own  room,  and  his 
face  was  drawn  and  pleading.  How  could  she  ever  have 
misjudged  him?  How  could  she  have  doubted  that  he 
wanted  her  more  than  anyone  had  ever  wanted  her  ? 

Her  tears  were  coming  quickly,  but  quietly,  without  pain. 
She  was  not  wrenched  and  hurt  as  she  had  been  when  she 
had  cried  in  Freda's  room.  She  was  not  sure  that  her  tears 
were  not  tears  of  happiness. 

Presently  she  wiped  her  eyes  and  picked  up  the  diary 
again.  She  found  that  she  was  reading  the  last  page. 

".  .  .  for  another  six  months,"  the  page  began,  "it  is  so 
tragic  that  it  is  almost  funny.  I  did  laugh  when  I  read  your 


130  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

letter,  but  I  don't  think  my  laugh  had  much  humour  in  it. 
Six  months  more  of  this,  as  if  I  could  .  .  ." 

After  that  he  had  drawn  a  whole  row  of  capital  "B's" 
across  the  page  and  partly  crossed  them  out.  Then  the 
manuscript  began  again  in  a  more  careful  writing:  "I  have 
been  down  to  Livelow.  The  wind  has  gone  down,  but  the 
sea  is  magnificent.  It  puts  strength  into  me.  I  have  decided 
to  send  you  this,  and  I  will  write  a  note  with  it  telling  you 
how  to  read  it.  I  don't  care  and  I  don't  care.  Only,  of 
course,  you  may  not  come  even  after  reading  this.  Well,  if 
you  don't,  I  shall  know  that  you  don't  care,  and  that  it  is 
better  you  shouldn't  come."  Then  came  a  long  dash,  and 
two  lines  lower  down  he  had  written  and  underlined :  "I 
shan't  commit  suicide.  I  had  meant  to,  but  I  see  that  that 
isn't  fair.  Believe  that,  Betty — believe  that  absolutely. 
Whatever  you  do,  I  shall  go  on  living  in  my  own  haphazard 
way,  however  blank  life  may  be." 


VI 

She  could  read  no  more  then.  She  got  up  and  put  back 
the  manuscript  in  the  envelope,  unlocked  her  door,  and  went 
upstairs. 

She  met  Freda  by  the  dining-room  door. 

"I  was  just  coming  down  to  make  inquiries,"  she  said; 
and  then,  catching  sight  of  Betty's  face  in  the  gloom  of  the 
lobby,  she  dropped  her  voice  and  went  on :  "You've  heard 
from  him  ?  Come  up  to  my  room.  Is  it  all  right  ?" 

"Yes,  it's  all  right,"  said  Betty  quietly.  "I'm  going  this 
morning,"  she  explained,  when  they  were  in  Freda's  bed- 
room. "I  know  everything  now.  All  this,"  she  explained, 
holding  up  the  long  envelope.  "I  haven't  read  it  all  yet,  but 
quite  enough.  Freda,  I  want  you  to  help  me.  I'm  going  to 
run  away.  I  don't  want  to  say  anything  to  anyone  but  you 
till  I'm  gone.  I  couldn't  stand  a  fuss  this  morning." 

Freda  nodded.  "I  shall  miss  you  frightfully,"  she  said; 
"but  I'm  sure  you're  right." 


SEPARATION  131 

"You  needn't  explain  anything  to  Mrs.  Parmenter  or 
anyone,  if  you  don't  want  to,"  suggested  Betty. 

"Oh,  I  don't  mind  that,"  laughed  Freda.  "I'll  tell  her. 
I  think  I  shall  take  your  place  for  a  time.  I  believe  L'm  the 
perfect  partner  you've  been  advertising  for  so  long." 

Betty's  face  lighted.  "Really?"  she  said.  "Oh,  how 
splendid  of  you !  I  never  thought  of  that.  Oh,  it  would  be 
such  a  relief  to  me  if  you  did." 

"I  think  it's  a  great  idea  for  me,  if  Mrs.  Parmenter 
doesn't  mind,"  said  Freda.  "But  what  about  you?  What 
train  are  you  going  to  catch?  Have  you  got  any  money? 
And  you  haven't  had  any  breakfast,  have  you?" 

"The  train  goes  at  eleven  o'clock  from  Paddington,"  Betty 
explained.  "It's  the  one  he  went  by." 

"And  what  about  money?" 

"I've  got  three  pounds.  I  think  it'll  be  enough.  All  the 
rest  is  in  the  Post  Office.  But  what  about  my  getting  away  ? 
I  think  I'll  pack  now,  and  then  would  you  mind  taking  my 
things  to  the  station?  Mrs.  Parmenter  and  Mrs.  Blakey 
won't  be  down  yet,  and  the  German  boys  will  have  gone 
out.  There'll  only  be  Alice,  and  I'll  send  her  up  to  do  the 
bedrooms." 

Her  thoughts  were  hurrying  so,  that  her  words  would  not 
keep  pace  with  them.  "I  must  telegraph  to  him,"  she  said. 
"I  ought  to  do  that  at  once." 

"I'll  go  and  do  that  while  you  pack,"  said  Freda.  "What's 
his  address?" 

"Trevarrian,  Mawgan,  St.  Columb,  Cornwall.  Say,  Tm 
coming  by  the  eleven  o'clock  train  from  Paddington.  Meet 
me.  Betty.' " 

"Oh,  my  dear,  you  must  write  it  down,"  expostulated 
Freda. 

VII 

"I  don't  mind  much  whether  Alice  saw  my  things  go  out 
or  not,"  Betty  explained,  as  she  and  Freda  waited  in  Pad- 
dington Station.  "Only  I  can't  get  rid  of  the  feeling  that  I 
must  hurry.  I've  read  all  his  letter  through  now,  and  I'm 


132  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

afraid.  I  don't  know  what  he  might  do.  You  did  send  that 
telegram,  didn't  you?" 

"It  went  at  a  quarter  past  nine,"  Freda  said.  "It's  bound 
to  be  all  right.  He'd  get  it  by  ten  o'clock." 

"It  is  bound  to  be  all  right,  isn't  it?"  Betty  persisted. 

She  had  no  thought  in  her  mind  now,  save  her  anxiety 
to  be  with  Jacob  and  to  reassure  him. 

But  she  had  before  her  eight  uninterrupted  hours  in  the 
train — time  enough  to  reconsider  the  decision  she  had  at 
last  so  impulsively  made. 


BOOK   III 
SOLITUDE 


IX 
JACOB   IN   CORNWALL 


WHATEVER  doubts  and  fears  Jacob  may  have  suf- 
fered during  the  first  two  hours  of  his  journey  into 
Cornwall  were  finally  dissipated  after  the  train  left  Bristol. 
Already  he  was  in  the  West  Country,  and  the  spirit  of  his 
splendid  adventure  was  warming  him  to  a  glow  of  excite- 
ment. The  parting  with  Betty  no  longer  depressed  him. 
He  saw  it  as  a  temporary  necessity,  and  was  full  of  a  glori- 
ous certainty  that  in  three  months  she  would  come  to  share 
with  him  this  intoxicating  release  from  the  gloom  of  Lon- 
don. 

He  was  definitely  conscious  of  release.  During  all  his 
adult  life  London  had  held  him.  He  had  been  unable  to 
break  away  from  her.  He  remembered  how  more  than  three 
years  before  he  had  come  first  to  Cornwall,  sunk  in  depres- 
sion, a  failure  without  money  or  prospects,  thrown  over 
both  by  his  wife  and  the  beautiful  Madeline,  who  had  been 
killed  so  tragically  a  few  months  ago.  And  even  then,  in 
face  of  all  his  loneliness  and  difficulties,  that  wild  coast 
had  put  new  heart  into  him,  had  given  to  him  on  one  bright 
April  morning  fresh  power  and  courage  to  return  to  the 
city  of  doubt  and  despair  which  had  been  the  scene  of  all 
his  misery,  but  from  which  he  could  not  then  escape. 

He  had  had  wonderful  experiences  during  the  interim. 
The  Jacob  Stahl  of  three  and  a  half  years  ago  was  a 
strangely  different  being  from  himself.  He  saw  that 
younger  version  objectively,  as  it  were  the  figure  of  some- 
one whom  he  had  known  with  an  incredible  intimacy,  some- 
one who  had  died  and  whose  place  he  had  taken.  Un- 
doubtedly he  was  not  the  same  man  who  had  sat  on  a  well- 

135 


136  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

remembered  rock,  and,  looking  out  over  the  Atlantic,  had 
said :  "I  have  had  to  learn  in  bitterness,  but  I  have  not  lost 
my  ideals."  He  felt  that  he  might  give  expression  to.  the 
same  thought  now,  but  with  a  different  intention. 

In  these  days  of  doubt  and  despair  he  had  always  been 
struggling  against  some  unseen  power  that  relentlessly  drove 
him  into  bondage.  He  had  wanted  to  be  free,  to  be  quit  of 
office  drudgery  and  the  authority  of  any  urgent  superior. 
But  when  he  tried  to  write,  some  cloud  had  been  interposed 
between  him  and  his  vision.  He  knew  that  all  he  had 
attempted  in  those  days  had  been  poor,  worthless  stuff.  It 
seemed  as  if  that  hated  control  of  his  had  been  deliberately 
guiding  his  destiny.  He  had  been  able  to  fight  it  and  he 
had  fought  it,  but  he  had  always  lost  in  the  end.  Some- 
times sheer  necessity  had  beaten  him,  and  sometimes  his 
resolution  had  failed,  and  all  struggle  had  suddenly  appeared 
as  futile.  But  always  when  he  submitted,  when  he  had 
been  willing  to  relinquish  himself  to  the  ease  of  being 
bidden,  the  control  had  taken  a  new  form  and  stirred  him 
again  to  effort.  He  remembered  how  three  years  before 
he  had  paced  that  little  sitting-room  of  Cecil  Barker's  in 
Camden  Town,  and  wondered  why  he  was  so  goaded  and 
driven.  .  .  . 

Now,  as  he  looked  back  on  his  life,  it  seemed  to  him  that 
none  of  that  struggle  could  have  been  purposeless.  He 
had  been  guided  from  childhood  to  the  present  hour.  All 
that  he  had  learned  and  suffered  had  been  necessary  for 
him  before  he  was  fitted  to  meet  Betty  and  to  take  up  the 
task  of  letters.  He  knew  now  that  he  could  write.  For 
a  time  his  thoughts  played  eagerly  with  the  novel  he  had 
planned,  and  every  scene  of  it  was  lit  with  the  brightness  of 
reality. 

Nevertheless,  he  had  no  illusions  as  to  his  own  capacity. 
He  knew  that  he  would  never  become  a  great  writer.  He 
did  not  greatly  desire  to  be  either  famous  or  rich.  He 
knew,  as  in  some  way  he  had  always  known,  that  ultimately 
he  must  find  expression  in  literature,  but  that  expression 


SOLITUDE  137 

was  a  means  only;  the  end  was  his  own  spiritual  develop- 
ment. .  .  . 

Betty  was  in  that  also.  She  had  some  immense  lesson 
to  teach  him.  .  .  . 

He  came  back  to  the  present  and  to  his  exquisite  con- 
sciousness of  release  as  the  train  ran  along  the  sea's  edge 
by  Dawlish.  The  English  Channel  sparkled  in  a  fresh  south- 
westerly breeze,  and  he  read  his  own  joy  into  the  leap  and 
flicker  of  the  crisp  sea.  Here  were  colour  and  movement 
under  the  great  freedom  of  the  sky.  It  came  to  him  afresh 
with  a  flood  of  thankfulness  that  he  was  going  to  live  within 
sight  and  sound  of  the  sea. 

He  fell  to  a  tender  consideration  of  the  restrictions  of  his 
fellow-travellers.  They,  poor  souls,  were  going  to  Devon 
and  Cornwall  for  a  little  fortnight's  or  three  weeks'  holi- 
day. He  was  going  to  stay  in  that  splendid  freedom  for  as 
long  as  he  would.  He  could  have  shouted  for  joy  at  the 
thought.  It  became  imperative  that  he  should  tell  some- 
one. 

A  man  some  few  years  younger  than  himself  was  stand- 
ing near  him,  also  intent  apparently  on  the  beauty  of  Daw- 
lish sands.  Jacob  looked  up  and  caught  his  eye. 

"Jolly  day,"  he  remarked,  by  way  of  introduction. 

"If  you  like  this  sort  of  thing,"  returned  the  stranger,  and 
added:  "I'm  fair  sick  of  it!  Been  up  to  London, for  my 
holiday,  and  had  a  high  old  time,  I  can  tell  you;  and  now 
I've  got  another  twelve  months  of  Plymouth  in  front  of 
me.  Ever  been  to  that  hole?" 

Jacob  shook  his  head. 

"Lucky  for  you,"  said  the  young  man.  •  "Take  my  advice 
and  keep  out  of  it." 

Jacob  changed  his  mind  as  to  the  necessity  of  sharing  his 
joy  with  this  stranger.  "You  might  get  as  sick  of  London 
as  you  have  of  Plymouth,"  he  suggested. 

"Likely  enough — in  time.  I  could  do  with  a  bit  more  of 
it,  though,"  replied  the  stranger.  "You  live  there  ?" 

"I  have  for  twelve  years,"  Jacob  explained.  "I'm  not 
going  back  there." 


138  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

"Doesn't  seem  to  have  broken  your  heart." 

Jacob  shook  his  head.  He  could  not  speak  his  ecstasy  to 
this  unsympathetic  person  from  Plymouth.  Some  day,  per- 
haps, he  would  try  to  write  of  it. 

"I  loathe  London,"  was  all  he  found  to  say,  and  evidently 
the  stranger  found  Jacob  no  less  failing  in  understanding 
than  Jacob  had  found  the  stranger,  for  he  made  no  other 
remark,  and  presently  went  back  to  his  own  compartment. 
Jacob  saw  him  there  later,  idly  turning  over  the  pages  of  an 
illustrated  magazine,  and  generously  pitied  the  man  for  his 
blindness.  He  was  happily  unconscious  of  spiritual  snob- 
bery. The  glory  of  his  new  title  to  life  was  such  a  dazzling 
affair.  .  .  . 

And  the  day  that  had  so  magnificently  blossomed  at 
Dawlish  was  not  destined  to  droop  prematurely.  His  friend, 
Hubert  Meredith,  met  him  at  Newquay,  and  announced  his 
intention  of  coming  out  to  Trevarrian  and  seeing  him  com- 
fortably settled  in  his  new  quarters. 

"You'll  find  the  Cornish  people  a  little  difficult  at  first," 
Meredith  said;  "but  once  they  accept  you,  they  are  your 
friends  for  life." 

Jacob  felt  that  he  was  coming  to  a  strange  country  and 
strange  people.  If  he  had  been  alone,  he  would  have  been 
intimidated  by  the  thought  of  all  the  energy  and  initiative 
that  would  be  required  of  him  before  he  could  settle  down  to 
some  kind  of  routine  in  this  alien  place.  Meredith's  offer  of 
help  instantly  relieved  that  fear.  Alone,  Jacob  suffered 
strange  spasms  of  helplessness;  with  an  audience,  even  a 
passive  one,  he  was  equal  to  an  undertaking  that  might  be 
increased  in  proportion  to  the  amount  of  admiration  he 
received. 

Meredith  proved  to  be  a  rare  cicerone.  He  talked  of  the 
town  of  Newquay  as  they  drove  a  mile  in  the  wrong  direc- 
tion in  order  to  send  a  telegram  to  Betty — Newquay  was 
almost  negligible  from  his  point  of  view — but  after  they 
had  turned  into  Forth,  he  offered  no  tedious  topographical 
introductions;  he  waited — a  little  anxiously,  perhaps — to 
judge  the  effect  of  the  place  upon  his  companion. 


SOLITUDE  139 

Jacob's  response  was  all  that  any  critic  could  have  de- 
sired. He,  too,  was  silent,  thrilling  to  some  appeal  he  could  ' 
not  as  yet  understand;  some  hitherto  hidden  expression  of 
the  Celtic  strain  in  him  that  in  all  his  thirty- four  years 
of  life  had  been  forced  to  seek  another  outlet,  and  had 
peered  out,  cramped,  distorted,  almost  unrecognisable. 

Here  was  an  aspect  of  himself  that  he  had  never  under- 
stood, that  he  was  still  unable  to  understand  without  an- 
other's help.  He  had  known  that  he  was  capable  of  curious 
emotions,  had  even  taken  a  secret  joy  in  them;  but  he  had 
believed  these  responses  to  be  a  form  of  weakness,  some- 
thing to  be  fought  against  and  conquered.  Many  times  in 
his  life  he  had  sought  relief  from  the  burdens  that  threat- 
ened to  break  him  by  taking  queer,  lonely  pilgrimages  into 
some  piece  of  country  unknown  to  him ;  futile  explorations 
that  had  been  made  when  his  duty  had  plainly  forbidden 
any  release  from  the  routine  of  necessary  work.  He  had 
on  such  occasions  played  truant  from  his  office,  trying  to 
console  himself  with  the  thought  that  these  excursions  were 
essential  as  a  relief  from  the  pressure  of  anxiety,  opposing 
the  vague  stir  of  conscience  that  suggested  laziness,  inertia, 
as  the  true  desire  of  his  mind.  Never  had  he  traced  these 
sudden  flights  from  duty  to  any  impulse  of  a  primitive 
wander-lust,  to  any  inborn  eagerness  to  throw  off  the  bonds 
of  necessity  and  march  out,  unshackled,  into  the  free  spaces 
of  earth.  The  desire  had  moved  feebly  within  him,  like 
a  child  in  the  womb,  and  he  had  restlessly  shaken  himself, 
desiring  to  quiet  the  irk  and  pain  of  its  struggle. 

And  even  now,  when  no  duty  withheld  him,  he  feared  the 
familiar  emotion  to  this  response  to  beauty  as  some  wild, 
incomprehensible  thing  that  was  antagonistic  to  his  well- 
being  ;  something  to  be  ashamed  of,  something  that  must  be 
repressed.  But  now,  for  the  first  time,  the  emotion  was  too 
strong  for  him. 

The  waggonette  had  climbed  the  hill,  crossed  the  open 
spaces  of  the  common,  and  now  faced  the  descent  of  the 
winding  road  that  seemed  as  if  it  must  lead  straight  over 
the  cliff's  edge.  Below,  the  wide  blue  of  the  Atlantic  lay 


140  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

spread  in  one  brilliant  field  to  the  deep  horizon,  until  their 
approach  revealed  the  broad  curves  of  its  laced  border, 
where  the  eternal  procession  of  little  waves  laid,  one  by 
one,  a  pattern  of  whitest,  vanishing  foam  on  the  golden- 
brown  bed  of  the  shell  beach.  The  sound  of  it  came  to  them 
on  the  heights  as  a  tiny  recurrent  crash,  with  whispered 
undertones,  a  hesitating  little  melody  endlessly  repeated, 
that  held  always  one  dragging  moment  of  suspense.  To  the 
right  of  them  the  crooked  valley  lay  between  broken  hills 
that  stood  high-shouldered  and,  as  it  were,  with  something 
of  obstinate  resolution  and  aloofness,  savagely  patient  in 
their  age-long  expectation  of  invasion  by  the  creeping 
strength  of  that  delicately  threatening  sea. 

Jacob  leaned  far  over  the  side  of  the  waggonette,  trying 
to  hide  the  inexplicable  tears  that  had  sprung  to  his  eyes. 
His  spirit  shouted  that  all  this  beauty  was  his  for  just  as 
long  as  he  cared  to  stay  and  enjoy  it. 


n 

The  consciousness  of  all  this  sheer  gain,  this  added  inter- 
est in  life,  served  to  relieve  in  some  degree  the  perplexities 
and  small  labours  that  confronted  him  before  he  could 
count  himself  settled  in  the  house  that  Meredith  had  taken 
for  him.  In  another  mood,  Jacob  would  have  hesitated  be- 
fore the  unfamiliar  duties  that  were  necessarily  to  become 
a  part  of  his  new  life.  He  had  never  cooked  a  meal  for 
himself,  nor  ordered  the  materials  for  it  direct  from  trades- 
men, and  the  whole  complicated  domestic  problem  appeared 
at  first  sight  as  terrifyingly  mysterious  and  difficult.  In 
London  he  had  contemplated  this  problem  without  dismay ; 
he  had  pictured  some  accessible  general  shop  from  which 
he  might  order  everything  that  he  required ;  had  conceived 
an  ideal  of  the  woman  who  was  to  "do  for"  him  as  a  re- 
sourceful, willing  creature,  who  would  be  always  at  his 
beck  and  call. 

The  reality  that  faced  him  soon  dissolved  these  illusions. 
The  one  tiny  shop  in  the  hamlet  of  Trevarrian  was  almost 


SOLITUDE  141 

useless — onions,  ginger-beer,  yellow  soap,  and  oil,  proved 
on  inquiry  to  be  the  only  produce  he  was  ever  likely  to 
require  from  it,  and  the  hopeful  qualification  that  they 
"belonged  to"  keep  tinned  salmon  was  of  little  material 
assistance. 

"Where  can  I  get  bread  and  meat  and  groceries  and 
things,  then?"  asked  Jacob,  with  a  touch  of  anxiety,  and 
learned  that  a  baker  came  over  from  St.  Columb  twice  a 
week,  a  butcher  from  Newquay  once  a  week,  and  a  grocer, 
also  from  Newquay,  once  a  fortnight.  The  grocer  alone 
was  particularised  by  name  as  Mr.  Stout — a  distinction  ac- 
corded to  him,  Jacob  found  later,  in  deference  to  his  posi- 
tion as  a  local  preacher  of  some  note. 

The  proprietress  of  the  tiny  shop  seemed  to  give  this 
information  with  a  show  of  uncertainty,  even  of  unwill- 
ingness. Her  "There  do  be  a  baker  as  comes  over  from 
St.  Cullum"  had  a  contemptuous  significance  to  Jacob's 
ears. 

"Is  there  anything  wrong  with  his  bread  ?"  he  asked,  a 
question  that  was  met  with  a  look  of  surprise ;  but  Meredith 
cut  in  by  saying: 

"Can  you  tell  us  where  to  find  Mrs.  Andrew?  She  is 
going  to  'do'  for  my  friend,  I  believe." 

"Aw!  yes,  she'm  a  few  doors  up  the  street,"  replied 
Miss  Curnow  carelessly.  "She  be  poaly,  though,  they  tell 
me." 

Jacob  was  conscious  of  an  enormous  helplessness.  Had  he 
been  alone,  he  might  even  have  returned  to  Newquay  rather 
than  face  the  blankness  of  this  reception ;  but  with  Meredith 
at  his  elbow,  and  the  glow  of  that  delight  waiting  to  be 
enjoyed  when  these  perplexities  were  unravelled,  he  was 
able  to  overcome  the  inertia  that  would  have  paralysed  him 
in  other  circumstances. 

"Can't  we  go  up  to  the  farm  and  see  Mrs.  Olver?"  he 
suggested  to  Meredith.  Mr.  Olver  was  his  landlord. 

"That  shop  doesn't  seem  particularly  anxious  to  do  busi- 
ness with  me,"  he  remarked  when  they  were  outside. 

"Oh,  that's  nothing!"  returned  Meredith.     "They're  al- 


142  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

ways  like  that  at  first.  Even  in  the  towns  they  give  you 
the  feeling  that  they  would  rather  not  serve  you.  But  I 
am  a  little  surprised  that  Mrs.  Olver  hasn't  got  the  place 
more  ready  for  you,  and  ordered  provisions." 

"And  where  are  we  to  find  a  substitute  for  Mrs.  Andrew, 
who  is  poorly,  they  tell  me?" 

"We'll  ask  Mrs.  Olver,"  said  Meredith. 

"It's  all  an  immense  joke,  of  course,"  Jacob  went  on 
gaily,  upholding  himself  in  his  newly-found  courage,  and 
consciously  delighting  in  it. 

"That's  the  only  way  to  take  it,"  Meredith  agreed. 

Mrs.  Olver,  however,  an  old  lady  of  nearly  seventy, 
proved  a  present  help  in  trouble.  She  was  shocked  to  hear 
that  no  preparations  beyond  an  unlocked  door  and  a  fire 
in  the  kitchen  had  been  made  for  her  new  tenant. 

"Why,  I  give  Mrs.  Andrew  the  things  myself !"  she  said, 
and  went  on  rapidly  to  explain  that  she  would  have  super- 
intended everything  personally,  had  she  not  been  suddenly 
called  away  to  visit  a  daughter  in  Padstow,  a  journey  from 
which  she  had  but  that  moment  returned. 

"I  hear  that  Mrs.  Andrew  is  ill,"  put  in  Jacob,  when  an 
opening  was  at  last  presented. 

Little  Mrs.  Olver's  face  crumpled  into  a  perplexed  frown. 

"She  isn't  'ealthy,  but  'er  'usband  works  for  us,"  were  the 
only  relevant  statements  in  her  long  reply. 

"Is  there  another  woman  in  the  place  who  could  do  the 
work  for  me  ?"  asked  Jacob,  and  found  himself  involved  in 
an  intricate  piece  of  local  history. 

Trevarrian,  with  its  thirty  inhabitants,  was,  it  appeared, 
mainly  divided  into  two  camps.  Two  years  ago  there  had 
been  a  lawsuit  in  St.  Columb,  an  action  for  assault,  de- 
fended by  a  counter-action  that  brought  a  charge  of  theft 
against  the  complainant.  Unhappily,  neither  action  had  suc- 
ceeded, and  each  party  had  had  to  pay  its  own  costs,  and 
so  the  feud  between  the  families  of  Andrew  and  Curnow 
remained  undecided,  leaving  a  permanent  cause  of  quarrel. 

"Of  course,  it  'asn't  anything  to  do  with  us,"  Mrs. 
Olver  explained,  permitting  her  hearers  to  see  that  the 


SOLITUDE  143 

Olvers  were,  by  virtue  of  their  class  and  position,  far  re- 
moved from  any  personal  interest  in  the  petty  intrigues  of 
their  inferiors.  "But  Mrs.  Andrew's  'usband  works  for 
us,  and  if  I  was  to  recommend  you  Millie  Curnow,  Mrs.  An- 
drew might  make  trouble." 

"But  you  think  Mrs.  Curnow  .  .  ." 

"She  isn't  been  married,"  explained  Mrs.  Olver.  "She's 
been  unfortunate,  poor  girl!" 

Meredith  understood.  "She's  got  a  child  to  look  after, 
then?"  he  asked. 

"Two,"  Mrs.  Olver  admitted ;  "but  the  youngest  is  nearly 
four,  and  she  lives  with  her  family." 

"Then  you  think  that  Miss  Curnow  .  .  ."  Jacob  began 
again. 

"Well,  you  mustn't  take  it  from  me,  you  know,"  said 
old  Mrs.  Olver,  "and  you  mustn't  mention  my  name." 

"I  see,"  put  in  Meredith  quickly.  "And  about  bread  and 
butter,  and  milk  and  eggs  .  .  .  ?" 

Mrs.  Olver  was  prepared  to  supply  her  tenant  with  any- 
thing he  needed  at  the  moment,  if  only  he  would  not  mention 
her  name  to  Millie  Curnow. 

"Perhaps  we'd  better  look  in  on  Mrs.  Andrew,"  sug- 
gested Meredith;  and  Mrs.  Olver  indicated  the  required 
house  from  her  own  front  door. 

Millie  Curnow's  direction  alone  would  have  been  quite 
useless,  for,  indeed,  there  was  nothing  that  could  have  been 
dignified  by  the  name  of  a  street.  The  three  or  four  rugged 
groups  of  cottages,  the  Olvers'  house,  a  smaller  farm,  and 
the  little  inn  that  turned  its  back  on  the  hamlet  and  alone 
faced  the  main  road,  were  clustered  here  and  there  with 
no  relation  to  each  other.  They  might  have  been  square 
boulders  fallen  haphazard  from  some  vanished  cliff,  and 
converted  to  dwelling-houses  by  the  simplest  possible  proc- 
ess. The  material  of  the  two  cottages  in  one  of  which  lived 
the  ailing  Mrs.  Andrew  (the  other  was  empty  and  ruinous) 
had  without  question  been  quarried  from  the  slope  that 
lifted  it  above  the  road,  for  the  cottage  was  perched  within 
a  few  feet  of  the  edge  of  a  miniature  cliff  that  presented 


144  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

a  rock  face  of  precisely  similar  quality  to  that  of  the  build- 
ing itself.  But  the  whole  village  had  evidently  grown  out 
of  the  rock,  which  in  its  natural,  unquarried  condition 
formed  the  visible  foundation  of  most  of  the  houses,  in 
some  cases  roughly  bonded  into  the  masonry  of  the  walls 
two  or  three  feet  above  the  general  ground  level. 

"It's  tremendously  picturesque,"  was  Jacob's  comment; 
and  he  looked  across  with  a  certain  satisfaction  at  the  house 
he  had  taken,  standing  two  hundred  yards  away  from  the 
village.  Like  the  other  houses,  it  was  a  cubical  piece  of  grey 
stone,  pierced  with  small  windows,  and  covered  by  a  low- 
pitched  roof  of  blue  slate,  relieved  by  patches  of  golden 
lichen.  But  on  that  side  of  the  valley  there  was,  at  least, 
some  deposit  of  earth  above  the  rock,  and  a  grass  road  led 
to  his  front  gate.  There  was  even  something  that  might  be 
described  as  a  garden. 

The  village  itself  was  a  sheer  quarry. 

"People  say  it's  rather  like  some  of  the  villages  in  the 
West  of  Ireland,"  remarked  Meredith. 

"Is  it?    I  Tike  it,"  replied  Jacob. 

The  tide  of  his  domestic  misfortunes  had  begun  to  ebb 
from  the  time  of  his  visit  to  Mrs.  Olver.  Mrs.  Andrew, 
they  found,  was  temporarily  confined  to  her  bed,  and  quite 
unable  to  work  for  him ;  and  so,  in  place  of  that  respectable 
slattern,  he  was  enabled  to  bespeak  the  services  of  Millie 
Curnow — unfortunate,  no  doubt,  but,  as  he  was  to  find, 
clean,  competent,  and  willing. 

She  was  more  complacent  when  they  returned  to  beg  her 
assistance.  It  is  true  that  she  made  some  demur,  and 
finally  accepted  only  on  condition  that  her  hours  should  be 
from  9.30  to  1 1  a.m.  and  from  6  to  7  p.m.,  the  only  time  she 
could  spare ;  but  she  volunteered  to  order  Jacob's  provisions 
for  him  from  the  travelling  tradesmen,  and  to  take  them  in 
if  he  should  be  out  when  they  called — a  great  relief,  for  he 
had  pictured  himself  miserably  glued  to  his  front  door  for 
at  least  three  afternoons  a  week,  waiting  to  catch  these 
casual  purveyors  as  they  passed  through  the  village.  Fur- 
thermore, she  was  willing  to  begin  her  duties  at  once,  come 


SOLITUDE  145 

in,  air  the  bed,  and  perform  any  other  work  that  might  be 
required ;  finally,  to  bring  some  oil,  the  one  useful  commod- 
ity she  could  supply  from  her  store. 

Now  that  his  difficulties  were  overcome,  Jacob  could 
surrender  himself  still  more  freely  to  the  feeling  of  adven- 
ture and  romance  that  had  been  with  him  throughout  the 
day.  He  had  a  sense  of  having  triumphed  over  circum- 
stance, and  he  savoured  the  sweetness  of  the  air  and  the 
murmur  of  the  sea  that  came  to  them  from  Beacon  Cave, 
half  a  mile  away  down  the  valley. 

"By  Jove !  this  is  a  ripping  place !"  he  said. 

."Good!"  murmured  Meredith,  and  explained  himself  by 
adding:  "I  wasn't  quite  sure  how  it  would  strike  you.  I 
was  rather  afraid  you  might  not  like  it.  It's  such  a  respon- 
sibility taking  a  place  for  another  man,  and  I  was  a  little 
uncertain — about  you,  you  know;  I've  only  seen  you  in 
London." 

"Thank  God  to  be  out  of  London !"  murmured  Jacob. 

"Yes;  it  was  just  that  I  didn't  know  about  you." 

"I  don't  think  I  knew  it  myself,"  replied  Jacob. 

One  further  piece  of  information  completed  the  day  for 
him. 

"How  light  it  is  down  here!"  he  had  said  to  Mere- 
dith. "It  must  be  past  eight.  I  suppose  the  air  is  so  much 
clearer." 

"Partly,"  Meredith  had  agreed,  and  had  added:  "And, 
of  course,  we're  five  degrees  west  of  Greenwich,  twenty 
minutes  later  in  time." 

Jacob  felt  that  he  was  in  another  country,  infinitely  far 
removed  from  London. 

If  only  he  had  Betty.  .  .  .  But  she  would  come  in  three 
months.  She  had  promised. 


in 

And  the  ecstasy  of  that  first  evening  gave  colour  to  all 
the  experience  of  the  next  few  weeks.  The  sweet  exhilara- 
tion of  the  morning  air  opened  each  day  for  him.  He  woke 


146  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

to  a  sense  of  joy  in  life,  and  found  beauty  in  the  crying 
of  seagulls,  the  chatter  of  starlings,  even  in  the  raucous 
screams  of  the  many  geese  that  roamed  perpetually  about 
the  village.  The  business  of  getting  his  own  breakfast  be- 
came a  source  of  delight;  he  was  so  full  of  energy,  so  glad 
to  have  occupation. 

"What  I  have  always  wanted,"  he  thought,  "was  a  spur 
to  independence."  He  realised  that  even  in  his  worst  times 
he  had  been  parasitic,  as  helpless  as  a  slave-keeping  ant; 
that  he  had  hardly  ever  thought  of  the  possibility  of  doing 
things  for  himself.  The  common  business  of  life  had  been 
made  too  easy  for  him,  and  when  energy  had  been  de- 
manded, he  had  been  too  enervated  to  reply. 

Here  in  Trevarrian  he  awoke  each  morning  to  the  knowl- 
edge that  he  alone  was  responsible  for  himself.  If  his 
affairs  went  wrong,  he  had  no  one  but  himself  to  blame ;  and 
the  sense  of  his  independence,  and  the  pride  he  took  in  his 
competency  to  perform  the  little  necessary  duties  of  life — 
such  things  as  the  lighting  of  fires,  the  provision  for  his 
meals,  and  the  cooking  of  them — gave  him  confidence,  a 
sense  of  ability,  and  the  energy  for  that  more  familiar  rou- 
tine of  earning  a  living,  chiefly  by  reviewing  for  the  Daily 
Post. 

Moreover,  the  development  of  his  novel  began  to  attract 
him  more  and  more.  With  his  usual  habit  of  self-deprecia- 
tion, he  regarded  the  work  as  little  likely  to  be  taken  by  a 
publisher,  but  he  took  an  increasing  pleasure  in  the  writing 
of  it. 

The  story  came  so  easily.  He  found  himself  in  the  posi- 
tion of  a  witness  and  recorder  rather  than  in  that  of  a 
creator.  The  phenomenon  interested  and  at  the  same  time 
slightly  scared  him.  It  seemed  so  possible  that  at  any  mo- 
ment this  unfolding  might  cease  and  leave  him  without  ma- 
terial. 

He  saw  that  the  detail  of  the  story  was  provided  by  the 
experience  of  his  own  life;  yet  the  central  character,  John 
Tristram,  that  boy  who  had  struggled  with  fear  in  the 
night,  differed  in  so  many  ways  from  himself.  It  was  as 


SOLITUDE  147 

if  the  writer  stood  outside  his  own  personality,  to  select 
certain  traits  and  reject  others. 

The  setting,  also,  was  the  familiar  village  of  Ashby- 
Sutton,  in  which  Jacob  had  lived;  but  Tristram  had  been 
lifted  in  the  social  scale,  and  figured  as  the  son  of  the  Rector 
— the  latter  a  frank  portrait  of  the  man  who  had  been 
Jacob's  tutor. 

These  differences,  which  seemed  so  considerable  to  him- 
self, gave  the  story  an  air  of  adventure.  He  felt  that  he  was 
writing  a  romance  that  had  nothing  in  common  with  so 
tedious  a  business  as  autobiography.  In  the  next  chapter 
some  delightfully  unforeseen  development  might  be  awaiting 
him,  and  he  was  eager  to  explore  the  further  history  of  his 
hero,  and  to  share  with  him  those  new  experiences  that  were 
so  like  and  yet  so  unlike  his  own.  And,  above  all,  he  was 
fascinated  by  the  realisation  that  the  story  he  was  writing 
was  so  unlike  the  conventional  ideal  of  the  novel.  He  had 
not  read  Flaubert  or  the  Russians,  and  in  1897  there  was  no 
English  realist  to  provide  him  with  a  model.  Nevertheless, 
the  thought  that  he  was  a  pioneer  of  an  English  school  of 
realism  never  suggested  itself;  indeed,  there  were  days 
when  he  sought  eagerly  for  the  precedent  of  some  conven- 
tion to  give  countenance  to  a  method  that  he  imagined  might 
be  breaking  some  essential  rule  of  the  novelist's  art.  His 
story,  interesting  as  he  believed  it  to  be  in  the  verisimilitude 
of  the  detail,  appeared  so  purposeless  to  him  in  his  more 
critical  moods.  It  led  up  to  no  possible  climax;  it  hardly 
developed  the  character  of  his  hero — certainly  not  towards 
any  accepted  ideal  of  the  triumph  of  virtue,  or  the  final  deg- 
radation of  vice.  It  did  not,  so  far  as  he  could  judge,  ex- 
press any  very  distinctive  attitude  of  his  own. 

All  these  failures  he  regarded  as  quite  reprehensible 
faults,  but  when  he  attempted  by  a  deliberate  effort  of  con- 
centration to  bend  his  story  towards  a  foreseen  and  inferen- 
tially  desirable  end,  all  the  drama  and  movement  of  it  fell 
suddenly  flat  and  stale ;  the  life  and  reality  were  paralysed, 
and  his  hero  became  a  feeble  doll  jerking  at  the  end  of  an 
all  too  visible  wire. 


148  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

Jacob  consoled  himself  with  the  thought  that  he  need 
never  send  in  his  manuscript  to  a  publisher.  The  writing 
of  the  book  was  experience,  a  lesson  in  technique ;  he  would 
finish  it,  and  then  put  it  aside.  No  one  but  himself  and 
Betty  should  ever  know  he  had  written  it.  He  would,  of 
course,  read  it  to  Betty.  He  was  writing  it  for  her,  and 
when  she  came  they  could  talk  it  over  together. 


IV 

Sometimes  he  approached  the  subject  obliquely  when  he 
was  with  Meredith,  by  discussing  the  purpose  and  method 
of  the  novel ;  but  Meredith  was  inclined  to  shirk  the  argu- 
ment. He  was,  he  explained,  just  finishing  another  novel 
himself,  and  was  afraid  of  any  suggestion  that  might  invade 
his  present  clear  conception  of  the  last  three  or  four  chap- 
ters. He  advanced  the  same  reason  when  Jacob  asked  if 
he  might  be  allowed  to  read  the  novel  in  question. 

"When  it's  finished  I  shall  be  tremendously  glad  if  you'll 
bother  to  read  it,"  Meredith  said ;  "but  it's  absolutely  fatal 
to  show  a  book  to  anyone  while  you're  writing  it.  Any 
criticism  upsets  you,  whether  it's  justified  or  not ;  and  it's  no 
good,  absolutely  no  good  whatever,  then.  It  may  help  you 
to  write  a  better  book  next  time ;  but  if  once  you  begin  to 
tinker  with  the  thing  you've  done,  it's  all  up — at  least,  that's 
my  experience." 

That  pronouncement  effectually  closed  the  way  against  all 
possible  confidences  of  Jacob's  for  the  time  being,  and  it 
was  not  until  nearly  the  end  of  October  that  he  dared  his 
great  experiment. 

He  had  read  Meredith's  novel  in  typescript,  and  was 
dreading  the  necessity  to  give  an  opinion  on  it.  The  book 
had  not  interested  him,  had  not  aroused  in  him  one  flush  of 
enthusiasm.  Here  was  the  classical  form  that  was  so  im- 
possible to  himself,  and  the  steady  flow  of  careful,  rather 
wordy  prose  that  always  expressed  the  writer's  well-marked 
literary  style,  even  when  it  purported  to  be  repeating  the 
speech  of  characters,  many  of  whom  obviously  differed  in 


SOLITUDE  149 

opinion,  culture,  and  social  position,  both  from  the  writer 
and  from  each  other.  Jacob  was  willing  enough  to  admit 
the  cleverness  and  the  rather  too  evident  artistry  of  the 
book,  but  the  clear  complaint  he  had  to  make  was  that  the 
book  did  not  live — that  the  effect  produced  was  not  that 
of  life. 

He  remembered  the  discussion  that  he  had  had  with 
Meredith  twelve  months  before  in  Torrington  Square — how 
long  ago  it  seemed! — on  precisely  the  same  question,  and 
found  that  he  could  only  emphasise  the  arguments  he  had 
then  tried  to  formulate.  It  appeared  useless  now  to  repeat 
that  criticism,  and  he  decided  to  give  praise  where  it  was 
due  as  enthusiastically  as  he  was  able,  and  then  to  speak  of 
his  own  book.  He  had  written  already  nearly  sixty  thou- 
sand words,  and  there  was  apparently  no  reason  why  he 
should  not  write  at  least  sixty  thousand  more.  Meredith's 
novel,  completed,  was  not  more  than  one  hundred  thousand 
words.  Jacob  had  made  a  careful  computation,  and  was 
inclined  to  be  proud  of  his  own  fecundity. 

He  walked  over  to  Forth  that  afternoon,  carrying  Mere- 
dith's manuscript  with  him.  He  climbed  down  the  cliffs  on 
to  the  sands  of  Watergate  Bay — wondering  now  that  he  had 
ever  been  daunted  by  that  descent — and  met  Meredith  at 
the  foot  of  the  Forth  Steps,  two  miles  farther  along  the 
beach. 

"I  was  just  coming  over  to  you!"  Meredith  exclaimed. 

"Oh,  good !  Come  along,"  said  Jacob,  "and  we  can  talk 
as  we  go.  I've  read  your  book.  It's  splendid!  It  dis- 
courages me  dreadfully.  It  is  so  absolutely  the  sort  of  thing 
I  couldn't  ever  do  myself."  He  was  looking  out  at  the  rip- 
pling edge  of  the  calm  sea,  but  he  saw  a  picture  of  his  old 
rooms  in  Torrington  Square. 

"Oh,  I've  said  all  that  before,"  he  went  on  quickly.  "I 
wish  I  were  more  articulate."  A  sudden  desire  for  confi- 
dence had  seized  him.  This  should  have  been  Meredith's 
afternoon,  but  he  wanted  to  make  it  his  own.  More  than 
that,  he  wanted  to  know  Meredith. 


150  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

"We're  all  on  the  surface  of  things,"  he  said  hesitatingly. 

"As  how?"  asked  Meredith,  with  a  smile. 

"You  and  I,"  Jacob  explained.  "Let's  sit  down  a  minute ; 
I  want  to  have  this  out." 

But  when  they  had  found  a  comfortable  rock,  and  Mere- 
dith had  lighted  his  pipe,  and  Jacob  a  cigarette,  the  emotion 
that  had  been  so  near  the  surface  a  moment  before,  had 
become  curiously  difficult  to  express. 

"/  don't  know,"  remarked  Jacob,  after  a  long  pause. 

"Is  it  about  the  book  ?"  Meredith  prompted  him. 

"Yes,  about  the  book  and  you ;  it's  all  of  a  piece." 

"I  hope  so,"  replied  Meredith  quietly. 

"Well,  the  fact  of  the  matter  is,"  said  Jacob,  feeling 
oddly  uncomfortable,  and  much  as  if  he  were  making  a  pro- 
posal of  marriage  to  some  woman  whose  inclinations  were 
quite  unknown  to  him — "well,  that  there's  something  a  little 
inhuman  about  your  book." 

"Sounds  pretty  dreadful,"  murmured  Meredith. 

"Well,  look  here,"  went  on  Jacob,  "when  we  met — how 
long  ago  is  it?  two  or  three  years,  anyway — we  sort  of  cot- 
toned on  to  one  another,  and  in  the  last  three  months  or  so 
we've  met  three  or  four  times  a  week;  but  I'm  hanged  if  I 
know  any  more  of  you — or  you  of  me — than  I  did  after  ten 
minutes'  talk  at  old  Lee  Perry's." 

Meredith  smoked  reflectively.  He  seemed  curiously  un- 
responsive. "What  more  do  you  want  to  know  ?"  he  asked. 

Jacob  shrugged  his  shoulders.  "There's  a  good  deal  of 
me  you  don't  know,  anyway,"  he  said,  "so  I  suppose  the 
same's  true  of  you." 

"I  think  my  books  express  all  of  me  that  is  worth  know- 
ing," Meredith  said. 

"Do  they?"  muttered  Jacob.  He  felt  baffled  and  de- 
pressed. Here  was  a  new  example  of  his  old  experience. 
He  had  had  so  many  heroes,  representative  of  so  many  vary- 
ing virtues,  and  they  all  had  failed  him  in  some  respect. 
He  thought  of  them — Farrell,  Bradley,  Cairns,  Barker. 
There  had  been  times  when  he  had  consciously  tried  to  shape 
himself  on  their  models,  and  always  some  revelation  of  them 


SOLITUDE  151 

had  succeeded,  some  aspect  of  incompleteness  that  had  in- 
validated their  heroism.  Was  the  fault  in  himself?  If  so, 
was  it  a  fault  at  all?  Was  it  not  rather  an  evidence  of 
growth  ? 

"What  are  you  trying  to  get  at?"  asked  Meredith  un- 
sympathetically. 

Jacob  shirked  the  straight  issue ;  he  was  afraid  of  it.  "I 
want  to  get  at  the  meaning  and  .  .  .  and  the  use  of  litera- 
ture ;  and  ...  oh !  of  life,  I  suppose,"  he  said. 

"I  suppose  we  all  want  to  do  that,"  returned  Meredith, 
without  enthusiasm.  "It's  a  largeish  problem,"  he  added. 

"Well,  why  can't  we  discuss  it  ?"  said  Jacob.  "It  may  be 
futile,  but  it  may  help — may  help  me  a  bit,  anyway." 

"I'm  quite  willing.  Fire  away !"  was  the  discouragement 
he  received. 

He  hesitated  a  moment,  frowning  at  the  eager  procession 
of  little  waves  that  endlessly  hurried'  to  curl  and  break  and 
stretch  a  tongue  of  water  up  the  sand,  as  if  that  were  the 
vital  business  for  which  they  had  come  into  being.  They 
were  of  all  kinds,  those  waves.  Some  seemed  to  become 
perplexed,  were  met  too  soon  by  the  return  of  their  pred- 
ecessor, and  broke  ineffectually — retreated  quickly  and,  as 
it  were,  ignominiously.  Others  were  typically  efficient,  good 
average  little  waves,  that  must  surely  have  retired  with  a 
quiet  consciousness  of  work  decently  performed.  And  every 
now  and  again  came  a  series — always  three  or  four  together 
— of  bigger  waves  that  overrode  all  opposition,  that  an- 
nounced their  consummation  with  a  louder  voice — intent, 
rather  self-important  waves,  that  had  an  air  of  showing 
how  the  thing  should  be  done,  so  it  seemed  to  Jacob.  He 
saw  himself  as  the  wave  that  broke  ineffectually,  that  ex- 
ploded too  soon. 

"Why  shouldn't  a  novelist  describe  life  as  he  sees  it?" 
he  asked. 

"That's  what  I  try  to  do,"  said  Meredith. 

"Transmuted,  and  all  the  rest  of  it,  by  your  own  tempera- 
ment?" 

"Necessarily." 


152  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

"I  simply  don't  understand  all  that  stuff  about  art," 
replied  Jacob  boldly.  "Method,  technique,  yes.  You've 
got  to  find  words  to  express  what  you've  seen,  and  you've 
got  to  join  'em  up  in  decent  grammatical  order,  so  that  they 
won't  offend  your  sense  of — sequence,  is  it?  But  what  I 
don't  understand  is  the  necessity  for  translating  all  your 
impressions  into  a  sort  of  phantasmagoria,  a  sort  of  general 
effect,  and  trying  to  hint  that  there's  a  hidden  value  under- 
neath it,  if  your  readers  will  bother  to  look  for  it.  .  .  ." 

"Is  this  a  criticism  of  me?"  put  in  Meredith. 

"I  suppose  so."  Jacob  blurted  out  his  assent,  afraid  lest 
he  might  be  tempted  to  qualify  it. 

"That's  my  natural  form  of  expression,  you  see,"  ex- 
plained Meredith,  after  a  little  hesitation.  "That's  the  way 
I  have  to  write — the  only  way  in  which  I  can  get  anywhere 
near  expressing  what  I  want  to  say." 

"Then  I  think  you  ought  to  write  verse  or  essays,"  said 
Jacob.  "I  don't  think  the  novel  is  your  right  medium." 

Meredith  whistled.  "Is  that  what  you'll  say  if  you  get 
my  book  to  review  for  the  Daily  Post?"  he  asked. 

"Oh,  Lord!  I  never  thought  of  that,"  exclaimed  Jacob. 
"That's  a  practical  way  of  looking  at  it." 

"Well,  would  you?" 

"I  don't  suppose  I  should." 

"Why  not?" 

"Probably  because  I  haven't  enough  faith  in  my  own 
critical  ability,"  remarked  Jacob,  after  a  short  considera- 
tion. "You  see,  that's  my  trouble,"  he  went  on.  "I  don't 
know.  I  want  to  talk  about  all  these  things,  and  I'm  afraid 
to  say  what  I  think,  generally,  because  I  know  so  jolly 
little." 

"None  of  us  knows  much,"  commented  Meredith. 

And  then  the  conversation  was  finally  diverted  from  the 
subject  of  art  in  the  abstract  by  Jacob's  coming  to  the  re- 
quest he  had  had  at  the  back  of  his  mind  throughout  the 
discussion. 

"You  know  a  good  deal  more  than  I  do,  though,"  he  said, 
"and  I  wish  ...  I  should  be  awfully  glad  if  you  would  give 


SOLITUDE  153 

me  an  opinion  on  the  stuff  I've  done.  I  ...  I  expect  it's 
all  utterly  rotten,  and  I  shan't  mind  your  saying  so  in  the 
least;  but  I'd  like  to  know.  It's  hardly  worth  while  going 
on  if  the  book's  no  good  at  all." 

"Rather !    Of  course  I  will,"  agreed  Meredith  quietly. 

He  was  by  no  means  a  narrow-minded  or  small-hearted 
man ;  but,  plodder  as  he  was,  he  had  something  of  the  artist 
in  him,  and  that  something  had  been  offended  by  the  drastic 
criticism  of  himself  as  no  novelist;  for  that  was,  in  effect, 
the  summary.  The  feeble  strain  of  passion  in  him  had  been 
stirred  to  a  mild  resentment,  which,  weak  as  it  was,  was  of 
the  quality  that  endures. 

'  Jacob,  as  usual,  had  been  unhappy  in  his  choice  of  the 
time  and  method  for  an  attempt  at  plain  speaking.  He  was 
content  to  admire  and  to  agree  for  so  long ;  but  whenever  he 
was  stirred  to  opposition,  he  had  the  unfortunate  knack  of 
presenting  himself  as  captious,  self-opinionated,  even  rude. 
His  qualifications,  his  assertions  of  ignorance,  or  sudden 
hesitations,  in  no  way  mitigated  the  effect.  They  appeared 
as  a  cloak  carelessly  assumed  to  cover  the  real  man,  so  un- 
expectedly revealed.  In  one  such  expression  of  himself  as 
that  he  had  just  given,  Jacob  could  permanently  injure  the 
friendship  of  years. 

He  was  conscious  that  he  had  blundered  on  the  present 
occasion.  "I  suppose  I  am  really  rather  an  unpleasant 
character,"  was  the  way  he  expressed  it  in  his  thoughts. 


He  saw  now  that  he  had  been  inept,  almost  insulting,  and 
on  the  way  back  to  Trevarrian  he  tried  to  make  some 
amends ;  but  Meredith,  with  no  show  of  temper,  and  only 
indicating  his  hurt  by  a  slight  change  of  manner,  would 
listen  to  no  apology. 

"Why  try  to  take  it  back?"  he  asked.  "You've  a  per- 
fect right  to  your  own  opinion,  and  you  were  obviously  say- 
ing what  you  meant  to  say.  Honestly,  I  prefer  that  you 
should  be  candid." 


154  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

Jacob  was  fumbling  in  his  mind  for  an  explanation.  He 
wanted  Meredith  to  make  allowances. 

"You  see,"  he  got  out  at  last,  "for  the  last  few  weeks  I've 
been  rather  engrossed  in  the  thing  I'm  doing,  and  I  suppose 
I  was,  in  a  sense,  standing  up  for  my  own  method ;  not  that 
I  really  think  it  is  a  method,  but,  you  know,  I've  been  sort 
of  hoping  it  might  be.  And  when  your  book  came  along,  it 
upset  me,  if  you  know  what  I  mean — made  me  feel  that  all 
my  stuff  was  rot,  and — well,  I  had  to  defend  it." 

"Oh  yes,  obviously!  Why  apologise?"  returned  Mere- 
dith ;  and  Jacob  felt  that  his  explanation  had  been  quite  use- 
less. For  a  few  minutes  he  nursed  a  sense  of  injury. 
Meredith  could  not  understand,  he  thought,  and  went  on  to 
discover  that  that  was  what  was  wrong  with  Meredith  as  a 
novelist:  he  was  out  of  sympathy  with  life  somewhere. 
His  confounded  art  was  too  academic ;  he  was  afraid  to  face 
realities. 

And  if  the  exhibition  of  his  novel  had  depended  upon 
Jacob's  initiative,  the  manuscript  would  certainly  not  have 
been  produced  that  evening.  But  after  tea  Meredith  quietly 
insisted. 

"You'll  never  be  able  to  read  my  writing,"  protested 
Jacob. 

"Would  you  like  to  read  it  aloud  ?" 

"Good  Lord,  no !  Not  for  the  world !"  Jacob  was  terri- 
fied at  the  mere  suggestion. 

"Well,  let  me  have  a  look  at  it,  anyway,"  said  Meredith. 
"As  a  matter  of  fact,  I  find  your  writing  fairly  easy  to  make 
out." 

Jacob  honestly  tried  to  put  him  off. 

And  when  the  manuscript  had  at  last  been  produced,  he 
found  that  it  was  clearly  impossible  to  sit  in  the  same  room 
with  Meredith  while  he  read  it.  He  read  so  rapidly,  and 
without  the  least  change  of  expression  ;  and  when  Jacob  took 
up  a  book  and  tried  to  forget  the  ordeal  he  was  undergoing, 
he  found  that  Meredith's  turning  of  the  pages,  his  least 
movement,  was  utterly  distracting. 

"It's  awfully  good  of  you,  but  I  really  wish  you  wouldn't 


SOLITUDE  155 

bother  to  read  it,"  he  said  desperately,  after  the  minutes  of 
discomfort. 

Meredith  looked  up.  "You  go  and  sit  in  the  kitchen,  and 
I'll  get  it  finished  before  supper,"  he  said. 

Jacob  took  his  advice,  and  presently  talked  to  Millie  Cur- 
now  as  she  washed  up  his  dinner  things.  When  she  had 
gone,  he  began  to  get  the  supper. 

At  half-past  seven  he  looked  into  the  sitting-room. 

"Have  you  finished?"  he  asked. 

"Pretty  nearly,"  replied  Meredith,  fluttering  the  twenty 
pages  or  so  of  foolscap  that  still  remained. 

"Oh,  well,  that's  quite  enough !  The  last  bit  wants  re- 
writing," said  Jacob.  "Come  on;  everything's  practically 
ready." 

Meredith  obeyed  with  a  disgusting  readiness. 

"It's  quite  good,  you  know,"  he  began,  as  soon  as  they 
had  sat  down  to  the  bacon  and  eggs  Jacob  had  cooked.  He 
had  all  his  meals  in  the  kitchen  for  practical  reasons. 

Jacob  looked  up  eagerly.  "Do  you  really  think  so?"  he 
asked. 

"Oh  yes.  For  that  kind  of  thing,  I  think  it's  decidedly 
good,"  said  Meredith. 

"What  kind?" 

"Realistic  fiction.     Haven't  you  read  Madame  Bovary?" 

Jacob  was  obliged  to  admit  that  he  had  not. 

"It's  a  recognised  school,  you  know,"  Meredith  continued. 
"I  don't  quite  know  anyone  in  England  who's  doing  it,  but 
it's  recognised  in  France,  of  course.  I  don't  quite  know 
how  to  define  it,  but  perhaps  the  main  distinction  is  in  the 
choice  of  the  typical  incidents  and  emotions.  The  realists 
don't  concentrate  on  the  larger  emotions,  you  see — quite  the 
reverse;  they  find  the  common  feelings  and  happenings  of 
everyday  life  more  representative.  You  may  have  a  big 
scene,  but  the  essential  thing  is  the  accurate  presentation  of 
the  commonplace." 

"Yes,  I  think  that's  pretty  much  what  I  have  tried  to  do," 
commented  Jacob.  He  was  greatly  relieved  to  learn  that 
his  was  an  accepted  method.  "I  think  that's  what  interests 


156  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

me.  It's  what  I  know  of  life.  I've  never  murdered  anyone, 
for  instance,  or  talked  to  a  murderer,  and  I  don't  know  how 
it  feels,  or  what  one  would  do  in  a  position  of  that  sort." 

"Oh,  there  are  plenty  of  arguments  for  realism !"  Mere- 
dith said,  in  a  tone  that  implied  he  had  no  intention  of  re- 
opening that  discussion. 

"And  do  you  really  think  my  stuff  is  passable — of  its 
kind?"  asked  Jacob. 

"Oh  yes,  quite,"  returned  Meredith,  with  a  repulsive  flat- 
ness. "You  see,  I  don't  admire  the  school.  I'm  not  in  the 
least  a  proper  person  to  criticise  you.  .  .  ." 

"Any  more  than  I  am  a  proper  person  to  criticise  you  ?" 

"Yes,  that  might  follow,  in  a  way." 

It  seemed  that  Meredith's  criticism  was  finished,  but  Jacob 
wanted  much  more  than  that.  "Do  you  mind  my  asking 
you  a  few  questions?"  he  said,  and  was  immediately  con- 
scious that  Meredith  also  had  written  a  book,  and  was  prob- 
ably equally  anxious  to  talk  about  it.  Yet  the  making  of 
any  sort  of  bargain  was  so  obviously  impossible. 

"You4  see,"  Jacob  went  on  quickly,  "I'm  such  an  absolute 
beginner,  and  I  don't  know  anything  about  writing  a  novel 
yet.  You  can  help  me;  I  couldn't  possibly  presume  to  help 
you.  You've  got  there.  You've  published  two  books,  and 
finished  a  third,  and  had  splendid  reviews,  and  fairly  good 
sales  .  .  ." 

"I  can't  say  that  I've  'got  there'  yet,"  returned  Meredith ; 
"but  never  mind  that.  Go  on  with  your  questions ;  I'll  tell 
you  anything  I  can." 

"Well,  to  begin  with,  does  my  book  seem  rather  purpose- 
less to  you,  and  .  .  .  and  rather  inconsequent  ?" 

"No,  it  isn't  at  all  inconsequent,"  Meredith  decided,  after 
a  judicial  pause.  "There's  the  natural  thread  of  Tristram's 
development — at  least,  of  his  growing  older.  As  to  being 
purposeless,  it  depends  on  what  your  particular  purpose  is. 
If  it  is  just  to  show  a  little  piece  of  life  as  you  know  it, 
you've  done  that ;  but  I  don't  see  that  anything  can  come  out 
of  it.  I  mean  that  your  piece  is  a  slice  cut  off  from  the  rest 


SOLITUDE  157 

and  put  under  a  microscope.  It  hasn't  any  relation  to  the 
whole." 

"I  don't  know  the  whole,  you  see,"  apologised  Jacob. 

Meredith  avoided  that  difficult  issue.  "But  you  might 
have  shown  some  thread  of  development,  progress,  advance 
towards  a  clearly  conceived  end,"  he  suggested. 

Jacob  sighed.  "When  I  try  to  do  that,"  he  said,  "the 
whole  thing  becomes  mechanical." 

"One  has  to  go  on  trying,"  was  Meredith's  platitudinous 
comment. 

"I'm  not  that  sort,"  Jacob  admitted  feebly.  He  realised 
the  force  of  Meredith's  illustration.  It  was  true  that  he  had 
put  a  piece  of  life  under  the  microscope,  and  not  related  it 
to  the  whole.  But  he  would  have  liked  to  point  out  that  he 
did  not  pretend  to  be  a  genius,  that  his  story  had  only  been 
an  attempt  to  do  the  thing  that  he  thought  he  could  do,  and 
that  he  made  no  claim  to  having  tried  to  write  a  master- 
piece. What  he  had  wanted  Meredith  to  do  was  to  give  an 
opinion  on  the  book  as  an  item  in  that,  no  doubt,  lower  class 
to  which  it  belonged. 

And,  with  a  growing  resentment,  Jacob  was  feeling  that  it 
was  better  to  have  done  well  what  he  had  done — if  he  had 
done  it  well — than  to  have  attempted  to  write  a  novel  that 
was  altogether  beyond  his  powers,  as,  perhaps,  Meredith 
had  tried  to  do.  Jacob  remembered  those  impressionist 
characters  in  his  friend's  book,  composite  portraits  of  rather 
stereotyped  people,  who  never  had  lived  and  never  could. 
That  method  was,  perhaps,  the  way  of  escape.  If  your 
characters  would  become  mechanical  when  you  tried  to 
force  them  into  ready-made  situations,  you  avoided  the  diffi- 
culty by  using  plastic  models  from  the  outset.  .  .  . 

The  rest  of  the  evening  was  spent  in  desultory  conversa- 
tion. Meredith  left  early. 

"I'm  going  up  to  town  at  the  end  of  the  week,"  he  said, 
as  he  was  at  the  door.  "I  don't  know  whether  I  shall  see 
you  again  before  I  go." 

"Rotten!"  was  Jacob's  comment.  "Shall  you  be  away 
long?" 


158  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

"A  month,  I  expect,"  Meredith  said. 

Jacob  walked  down  the  grass  drive  with  him  as  far  as  the 
gate  on  to  the  road. 

"I  shall  see  you  when  you  come  back,  of  course?"  he  said. 

"Of  course,"  replied  Meredith.  He  hesitated  a  moment, 
and  then  said:  "Looks  like  rain,  doesn't  it?  Well,  good- 
bye." 

"Good-bye,  old  chap,"  returned  Jacob. 

He  stayed  at  the  gate  until  he  could  hear  no  longer  Mere- 
dith's footsteps  on  the  road,  and  then  sauntered  back  to  the 
house.  He  was  suddenly  conscious  of  a  feeling  of  depres- 
sion, and  when  he  entered  the  house  it  seemed  unusually 
empty,  inhospitable,  gloomy. 

He  sighed  as  he  bolted  the  front  door  behind  him. 

The  lamp  in  the  sitting-room  had  not  been  filled  that 
morning  and  was  burning  low.  A  little  puff  of  smoke  came 
from  the  fireplace. 

"Damn  that  chimney!"  Jacob  said  aloud.  "I  hope  to 
goodness  it  isn't  going  to  smoke  again !"  He  looked  at  the 
lamp  and  mentally  cursed  that  also.  He  must  not  get  into 
the  habit  of  talking  aloud  in  his  solitude,  he  thought. 

He  wished  that  Betty  was  there.  Her  time  was  nearly  up, 
but  she  had  said  nothing  in  her  letters  as  to  any  particular 
date  on  which  he  might  expect  her. 

She  might  not  come ! 

He  looked  round  the  darkening  sitting-room  with  a  new 
sense  of  disgust.  If  she  did  not  come  after  all,  he  could 
never  stand  this  place  alone  all  the  winter.  But  she  must — 
oh,  surely  she  would  come !  She  had  promised. 

He  saw  the  manuscript  of  his  novel  on  the  table,  sighed 
again  and  shrugged  his  shoulders.  He  saw  now  that  it  was 
poor  stuff.  He  had  not  needed  Meredith's  criticism  to  tell 
him  that. 

VI 

He  woke  the  next  morning  to  the  consciousness  of  some 
unaccountable  misery  that  waited  upon  him.  It  was  hardly 
light  yet,  and  the  rain  was  crashing  violently  against  the 


SOLITUDE  159 

window  by  his  bed.  He  had  kept  that  window  closed  while 
he  slept,  ever  since  he  had  been  awakened  one  September 
night  by  a  perfect  douche  of  cold  water.  It  had  amused 
him  then  to  see  that  the  force  of  the  squall  had  driven  the 
rain  clear  across  the  room  and  wetted  the  farther  wall.  It 
was  another  of  those  phenomena,  peculiar  to  this  strange, 
adventurous  county  of  Cornwall.  He  liked  to  remember 
that  he  was  on  a  peninsula  stretching  out  into  the  Atlantic, 
and  that  he  might  at  any  time  witness  some  prodigious  man- 
ifestation of  natural  forces. 

This  morning,  the  dull  gloom  of  the  sky  and  the  shatter- 
ing onslaught  of  the  squall  only  added  to  his  dejection.  He 
got  up,  closed  the  little  window  at  the  other  end  of  the  room, 
and  then  returned  to  bed.  He  was  wide  awake,  and  had  no 
further  inclination  to  sleep,  but  the  thought  of  going  down 
to  light  the  kitchen  fire  brought  a  feeling  of  weariness  and 
disgust. 

Something  had  been  taken  from  him.  The  book  upon 
which  he  had  spent  so  much  time,  was  a  futility.  He  had 
told  himself  that  it  would  never  be  submitted  to  a  publisher, 
but  he  recognised  the  foolishness  of  that  deception  this 
morning.  Subconsciously,  he  had  always  pictured  his  book 
in  the  hands  of  discriminating  reviewers  and  an  admiring 
public.  But  that  was  not  all — not  a  half  of  the  trouble  that 
faced  him.  Betty  was  not  coming.  He  felt  perfectly  cer- 
tain now  that  he  would  never  see  her  again.  This  mood  of 
his  was  not  depression ;  there  was  no  particular  cause"  why 
he  should  be  more  depressed  to-day  than  any  other  day;  it 
was  a  realisation  of  facts.  He  had  been  living  in  a  fool's 
paradise,  and  now  he  saw  things  clearly. 

He  was  a  failure.  He  had  always  been  a  failure,  and  only 
the  deceptive  workings  of  his  imagination  had  ever  stood 
between  him  and  the  realisation.  He  fooled  himself  into  a 
false  belief  in  his  own  virtues  and  ability.  He  had  neither, 
and  there  were  moments  when  he  stood  naked  before  his 
own  judgment,  and  saw  himself  as  he  was.  He  would  cer- 
tainly gravitate  at  last  to  his  proper  level,  the  gutter,  as  a 
man  he  had  once  known  had  fallen  before  him.  He  began 


T60  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

mentally  to  write  a  realistic  account  of  his  descent,  that 
ended  surprisingly  with  his  resuscitation  on  the  publication 
of  "one  of  the  most  wonderful  pieces  of  descriptive  writing 
ever  given  to  the  world,"  as  an  imaginary  reviewer  of  his, 
described  the  work. 

He  got  up  then,  with  a  sort  of  vicious  determination ;  and 
as  it  was  not  of  the  least  consequence  what  he  did  that  morn- 
ing, abused  himself  aloud  as  he  dressed.  There  was  no  one 
to  overhear  him ;  the  nearest  cottage  was  three  or  four  hun- 
dred yards  away. 

"Silly,  dreaming  idiot!"  he  said  brutally,  to  the  sunburnt 
image  in  the  looking-glass.  .  .  . 

The  sitting-room  fire  smoked.  He  had  known  that  it 
would,  with  the  wind  in  the  south-west  and  blowing  a  gale ; 
but  he  made  an  experiment,  nevertheless,  and  was  half 
choked  in  the  attempt.  That  chimney  was  another  of  the 
curiosities  peculiar  to  Trevarrian.  In  the  gusts  of  a  wind 
such  as  this,  the  flames  roared  out  into  the  room  through 
the  bottom  bars  of  the  grate,  and  blew  the  ashes  over  the 
hearthrug,  even  up  on  to  the  table.  There  was  only  one 
remedy — a  partial  one  at  best — and  that  was  to  sit  with  the 
window  closed  and  the  door  of  the  sitting-room  and  the 
inner  and  outer  doors  of  the  kitchen  all  wide  open.  This 
method  necessitated  sitting  in  an  overcoat;  the  carpet  bil- 
lowed up,  sometimes  moving  the  chairs,  and  everything  in 
the  house  banged  and  crashed  in  the  hurricane  that  hurled 
through  the  passages — a  hardly  bearable  discomfort. 

There  was  nothing  for  it  to-day  but  to  sit  in  the  kitchen, 
a  bare,  stone-flagged,  badly  lighted  place,  with  whitewashed 
walls,  and  ill-fitting  outer  door  that  opened  direct  into  the 
yard. 

He  gave  up  all  thought  of  work  with  a  faint  sense  of  re- 
lief at  the  unquestionable  validity  of  his  excuse — an  excuse 
good  enough,  surely,  to  satisfy  even  that  cursed  demon  of 
conscience  that  sat  on  his  shoulders  and  for  ever  goaded 
him  to  the  exertion  he  found  it  so  hard  to  make.  But  no 
alternative  held  out  any  prospect  of  enjoyment.  He  meant 
to  read  some  book  that  was  not  for  review,  preferably  some 


SOLITUDE  161 

book  that  he  had  read  before ;  but  when  he  turned  over  his 
very  limited  stock,  he  hated  the  sight  of  them  all.  Not  one 
of  them  offered  the  least  hope  of  distraction  from  the  misery 
of  his  surroundings.  .  .  . 

He  went  to  the  front  door  after  Millie  Curnow  had  gone, 
and  looked  out,  wondering  whether  it  would  be  worth  while 
to  face  the  rain  that  drove  horizontally  across  the  grass 
drive  before  him  and  obscured  all  sight  of  the  village.  So 
fierce,  indeed,  was  the  wind  that  on  this,  the  sheltered  side 
of  the  house,  he  could  walk  out  two  or  three  yards  into  the 
open  without  getting  wet. 

"Couldn't  face  it,"  he  decided,  and  filled  half  an  hour  by 
boiling  some  water,  and  shaving. 

At  a  quarter  to  twelve  a  postman  arrived  and  brought  a 
letter  from  Betty ;  but  he  found  nothing  in  it  to  relieve  his 
depression.  She  gave  him  an  account  of  her  meeting  with 
Freda  Cairns  and  Philip  Laurence,  and  Jacob  wondered 
whether  Betty  had  not  been  adversely  influenced  by  her 
sight  of  that  menage.  Plainly,  the  flouting  of  the  marriage 
service  had  not  been  a  great  success  in  that  case,  and  she 
might  make  an  altogether  false  application  of  the  instance. 

He  sat  down  to  answer  her  letter  at  once — the  wall  letter- 
box was  cleared  at  half-past  two — but  a  sense  of  wasted 
effort  overcame  him  after  he  tried  to  point  out  that  she  must 
not  be  influenced  by  her  sight  of  the  Laurences.  Moreover, 
any  argument  of  that  kind  inevitably  led  to  pleading  his  own 
case,  and  he  had  promised  not  to  put  any  compulsion  upon 
her.  She  must  come  of  her  own  free  will;  she  must  will- 
ingly fulfil  her  promise,  or  there  could  be  no  happiness  for 
either  of  them.  He  had  seen  that  once  so  clearly  that  he 
could  never  forget  it.  He  saw  at  that  moment,  with  perfect 
distinctness,  the  very  shape  of  the  domino  score  he  had  oblit- 
erated on  the  marble  table  of  the  little  restaurant  in  Hoi- 
born.  .  .  . 

What  he  wrote  was,  he  knew,  a  merely  perfunctory  an- 
swer to  her  letter,  and  he  found  great  difficulty  in  express- 
ing himself.  There  were  several  "doubles"  he  noticed,  but 


162  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

he  could  not  bother  to  alter  his  phrases.  After  all,  it  would 
make  no  difference  to  anyone  what  he  wrote. 

The  journey  back  from  the  pillar-box  was  an  adventure. 
He  was  forced  to  keep  his  face  hidden,  for  the  rain  stung 
like  driven  sand,  and  more  than  once  in  his  short  journey  he 
had  to  stop  and  brace  himself  against  some  fiercer  gust  that 
threatened  to  blow  him  off  his  feet. 

He  gasped  with  relief  as  he  reached  the  lee  of  the  house, 
but  he  was  slightly  invigorated  by  the  struggle.  He  could 
hear  the  dull  thunder  of  the  sea  at  Livelow  as  an  intermit- 
tent theme  that  filled  the  intervals  when  the  wild  shouting 
of  the  gale  dropped  momentarily  to  a  less  aggressive  note ; 
and  in  those  intervals  he  could  hear,  too,  a  dull,  reverberat- 
ing boom  overhead,  as  though  the  whole  vast  shell  of  the 
sky  had  been  wonderfully  rung  by  the  enormous  onslaught 
of  the  wind. 

"Gad,  what  a  day !"  muttered  Jacob,  with  a  touch  of  glee. 
He  wished  that  he  could  watch  the  sea,  but  he  knew  that 
even  if  he  could  battle  his  way  down  the  half-mile  of  valley 
that  separated  him  from  Livelow,  he  would  not  be  able  to 
open  his  eyes  in  face  of  the  tearing  spray  that  would  be 
hurled  at  him.  He  had  caught  a  glimpse  of  a  white  tongue, 
that  had  leapt  above  a  rent  in  the  cliffs  as  he  had  fought 
his  way  back  from  the  post,  and  the  cliff  even  at  that  gap 
was  nearly  a  hundred  feet  above  high-water  mark.  .  .  . 

At  half-past  five  came  a  perceptible  lull,  and  when  a  few 
minutes  later  the  uproar  began  again  it  had  another  note, 
and  the  kitchen  door  no  longer  chattered. 

"Got  back  to  the  south  a  bit,"  said  Jacob  aloud.  "I 
wonder  if  I  could  get  that  fire  to  go  now." 

He  went  into  the  sitting-room  and  held  a  lighted  match  up 
the  chimney.  The  flame  was  almost  instantly  extinguished, 
but  it  leapt  up  now  instead  of  down.  "Good !"  murmured 
Jacob,  and  started  the  fire,  which  immediately  began  to  roar 
fiercely.  For,  as  Jacob  had  learned,  a  variation  of  a  few 
points  in  the  direction  of  the  wind  meant  the  difference 
between  a  tremendous  down-draught  and  an  equally  power- 
ful up-draught. 


SOLITUDE  163 

When  Millie  Curnow  came  to  wash  up  at  six  o'clock,  she 
found  Jacob  taking  a  sort  of  proprietorial  pride  in  the  force 
of  the  storm. 

"It  'as  been  rough,"  she  agreed.  "Mr.  Giver's  'ad  one  of 
his  ricks  blown  down." 

"You  don't  often  get  it  as  bad  as  this,  I  suppose?"  sug- 
gested Jacob. 

'  Twas  worse'n  this  a  year  back,  last  March  month,"  said 
Miss  Curnow.  "There  was  a  boat  come  in  to  Trevarrian 
sands  then,  and  they  couldn't  use  the  rocket.  Seven  of'm 
drowned  there  was.  Aw!  that  was  a  tur'ble  gale,  sure 
'nough.  Worst  we've  'ad  in  forty  years,  they  tell  me.  .  .  ." 


VII 

The  next  day  the  wind  had  abated  somewhat,  but  it  had 
veered  in  the  night,  and  it  was  again  impossible  to  light  the 
sitting-room  fire. 

Jacob  mooned  about  the  house  most  of  the  morning — it 
was  too  wet  to  go  out ;  but  after  the  post  had  come,  bring- 
ing him  two  review  proofs  and  his  copy  of  yesterday's 
paper,  he  had  a  sudden  inclination  to  work,  took  out  the 
manuscript  of  his  novel,  and  read  through  three  or  four  of 
the  earlier  chapters. 

"It  isn't  half  bad,"  he  said  modestly — "not  half  bad.  I 
think  I'll  go  on  with  it,  anyway.  Damn  Meredith !  he's  pre- 
judiced." And  then  he  once  more  registered  a  vow  that  he 
must  give  up  talking  to  himself.  "It's  a  sign  of  madness," 
he  said  aloud,  as  though  he  would  impress  the  sub-conscious 
listener  he  presumably  addressed.  "You'll  have  to  chuck 
it,"  he  continued,  and  added :  "I  wonder  how  often  I  do  it 
without  noticing."  On  this  occasion  he  took  preventive 
measures  by  persistently  whistling. 

He  did  not  do  much  work  that  day.  He  had  come  to 
the  end  of  a  chapter,  and  was  uncertain  of  his  material  for 
the  next.  But  after  supper  he  found  his  imagination  play- 
ing with  a  development  that  might  come  later  in  the  book, 
and  he  decided  to  write  this  more  interesting  material  at 


164  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

once  and  fill  in  the  gap  afterwards.  Some  argument  with 
that  ghostly  mentor  of  his  was  necessary  before  this  plan 
was  settled.  He  had  a  guilty  feeling  that  he  was  shirking 
the  harder  task,  and  he  had  to  make  it  quite  clear  that  if  he 
did  not  write  that  chapter  while  it  was  fresh  and  bright  in 
his  mind,  he  would  forget  the  essential  touches.  Con- 
clusively, if  he  did  not  do  this,  he  would  probably  do  noth- 
ing at  all.  It  was  almost  a  threat. 

He  went  to  bed  with  a  rather  triumphant  sense  of  having 
scored. 

And  when  he  woke  in  the  morning,  the  wind  had  dropped 
and  the  sky  was  clear.  When  he  had  dressed  he  went  into 
one  of  the  unused  bedrooms  in  the  front  of  the  house  and 
watched  the  day  break.  He  thought  he  would  like  to  write 
the  story  of  a  man  who  had  lain  in  the  gorse  all  night  and 
longed  for  the  sunrise,  describing  all  the  exquisite  slow 
process  of  the  dawn.  "But  things  of  that  sort  aren't  sale- 
able," he  reflected,  as  he  cooked  his  breakfast. 

Nevertheless,  he  attempted  a  few  phrases  of  the  story 
before  he  began  his  new  chapter. 

He  was  warm  with  enthusiasm  when  the  postman  came 
and  brought  him  another  letter  from  Betty. 

The  contents  of  it  effectually  damped  his  momentary 
elation.  She  was  going  to  her  sister's  wedding  the  next  day, 
and  she  had  been  unable  to  find  another  partner  for  Mrs. 
Parmenter.  Those  were  her  only  items  of  news,  which 
Jacob  coupled,  putting  upon  them  the  worst  possible  con- 
struction. In  effect  she  was  going  to  break  her  promise. 
She  was  not  coming.  Two  days  ago  he  had  thought  that 
this  was  in  her  mind,  but  since  then  hope  had  revived.  Now 
he  was  finally  certain.  And  she  had  not  had  the  courage 
to  tell  him  openly;  she  had  tried  to  prepare  him  by  this 
ominous  letter — the  whole  tone  of  it  was  formal,  unaffec- 
tionate. 

What  was  he  to  do?  That  was  the  bewildering,  impos- 
sible problem  that  he  had  in  some  way  to  solve.  Where 
could  he  go  ?  Impossible  for  him  to  face  the  loneliness  of  a 
winter  in  this  awful  place ;  equally  impossible  to  picture  any 


SOLITUDE  165 

other  kind  of  life  that  could  conceivably  be  even  tolerable. 
He  thought  of  London  with  loathing,  and  he  hesitated  for  a 
time  over  the  contemplation  of  a  boarding-house  at  New- 
quay.  He  could  have  the  sea  and  the  rocks  there,  and  yet 
find  some  sort  of  companionship — that  he  must  have.  That 
idea  seemed  almost  possible,  until  he  reflected  that  the 
boarders  he  would  meet  would  almost  certainly  be  old  ladies 
and  invalids.  He  could  not  go  to  the  various  boarding- 
houses  and  ask  if  anyone  was  staying  there  who  would  be 
glad  to  take  a  peculiar  interest  in  a  lonely  man  with  literary 
ambitions.  Sympathy  was  what  he  wanted.  But  it  was 
just  as  well  that  Betty  was  not  coming.  If  her  love  for  him 
was  not  strong  enough  to  overcome  her  little  conventional 
scruples,  they  would  certainly  be  miserable  together.  She 
would  loathe  the  sight  of  him  after  a  month. 

He  was  such  a  poor  creature.  ,He  had  no  grit,  no  big,  fine 
qualities.  It  was  obvious  that  he  could  never  inspire  a  real 
affection  in  anyone.  Also,  he  would  get  no  dinner  if  he  did 
not  go  and  cook  it.  He  only  had  to  boil  potatoes ;  there  was 
some  cold  mutton  in  the  house  that  Millie  had  baked  yester- 
day morning.  But  he  felt  that  boiling  potatoes  would  be  in- 
tolerably irksome  just  then,  and  the  whole  business  involved 
laying  the  table.  No,  he  could  not  be  bothered.  He  would 
have  eggs  for  supper.  And  his  boots  wanting  mending. 
He  had  only  one  pair  of  brown  boots,  and  he  would  have  to 
walk  a  mile  and  a  half  across  the  fields  to  St.  Mawgan  in 
black  boots — an  unthinkable  thing. 

He  would  give  up  struggling  with  all  these  dreadful 
exigencies.  He  would  wear  his  boots  till  they  were  worn 
out,  and  then  go  barefoot.  He  would  degenerate,  take  no 
more  trouble  about  anything,  let  his  work  slide,  and  when 
he  had  no  money  left,  he  would  turn  tramp  and  beg. 

He  made  a  beginning  by  eating  a  dinner  of  bread  and 
cheese,  untidily,  from  the  larder  shelf.  Afterwards  he 
slouched  down  to  Mawgan  Forth,  sat  on  a  rock,  and 
watched  the  tide  come  in.  It  was  a  warm,  still  afternoon, 
the  beginning  of  that  short  spell  of  fine  weather  known  as 
"St.  Martin's  Summer."  .  .  . 


166  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

Presently  he  fell  to  making  a  story  of  his  misery,  and  then 
cursed  himself  as  a  hypocrite.  "You  deliberately  slouched 
dov/n  there,"  he  said  to  himself,  "and  now  you're  trying  to 
turn  the  thing  into  literature.  Oh,  I  wish  to  God  you'd 
come  real!"  He  stood  up,  and  wondered  if  he  could  face 
drowning.  "I  don't  believe  I  should  mind  it  a  bit,"  he 
thought,  "I  am  so  utterly  sick  of  myself." 

He  might  have  made  experiment  at  once,  but  a  backward 
glance  at  the  cliff  discovered  a  coastguard  leaning  his  elbows 
on  the  low,  whitewashed  wall  that  tied  in  the  short  line  of 
staring  cottages.  And  the  knowledge  that  he  was  being 
watched  not  only  induced  a  return  of  self -consciousness, 
but  also  started  his  introspective  analysis  on  a  new  theme. 
"I'm  so  much  more  real,"  he  thought,  "when  I'm  with  other 
people.  It's  when  I'm  by  myself  that  I  seem  such  a  ghastly 
humbug." 

His  walk  home  exhibited  no  sign  of  a  "slouch."  He  had 
forgotten  the  tramp  ideal.  But  the  sight  of  his  empty  house 
chilled  and  depressed  him.  "I  must  fight  this,"  he  thought, 
and  determined  to  make  an  instant  beginning  by  having 
toast  for  tea.  Moreover,  he  would  face  the  inevitable,  and 
take  those  boots  over  to  Mawgan  the  next  day. 

VIII 

He  waited  four  days  before  he  answered  Betty's  letter. 
In  the  interval  he  had  returned  to  a  more  normal  frame  of 
mind.  The  weather  was  still  warm  and  clear,  and  he  had 
been  down  to  Livelow  every  morning  for  half  an  hour  after 
breakfast,  and  to  Trevarrian  sands  or  Bedruthan  every  af- 
ternoon. He  had  avoided  Mawgan  Forth  because  he  dis- 
liked the  feeling  that  he  was  being  watched  by  the  coast- 
guard. His  boots,  however,  were  still  unmended.  He  had 
decided  that  it  would  be  better  to  hire  the  Olvers'  jingle 
and  drive  into  Newquay,  where  he  might  buy  a  new  pair 
of  brown  boots  and  leave  the  old  ones  to  be  properly  re- 
soled— old  Nye  at  Mawgan  was  only  a  cobbler,  and  clumsy 
at  that. 


SOLITUDE  167 

He  had  put  his  book  aside  for  the  moment,  but  he  had 
written  four  reviews  for  the  Daily  Post,  and  felt  that  he  had 
not  altogether  wasted  his  time.  But  when  he  sat  down  to 
write  to  Betty,  the  old  feeling  of  inertia  and  hopelessness 
overcame  him  again.  What  could  he  say?  This  was  un- 
doubtedly the  critical  moment,  and  therefore  precisely  the 
moment  when  he  must  leave  the  decision  to  her.  And  with 
that  reflection  his  thoughts  began  to  run  in  the  old  weary 
round,  until  he  believed  that  he  would  be  thankful  to  know 
certainly  that  it  was  impossible  for  her  ever  to  come.  The 
letter  he  wrote  at  last  fully  expressed,  he  thought,  the  effect 
of  a  tired  mind,  and  he  sent  it  with  a  faint  hope  that  she 
might  read  his  misery  between  the  lines.  He  made  no  ref- 
erence to  the  failure  of  her  advertisement,  because  he  felt 
that,  if  once  he  touched  on  that  subject,  he  would  be  tempted 
to  say  too  much. 

Her  reply,  two  days  later,  only  served  to  confirm  his  most 
gloomy  suspicions.  It  was  certainly  more  affectionate  than 
any  she  had  written  for  some  weeks,  but  no  doubt  she  was 
afraid  to  make  her  announcement  too  abruptly.  Perhaps 
she  imagined  that  he  would  gradually  forget  her !  That  he 
had  already  forgotten  her  promise  to  come  in  three  months. 
And  the  time  was  up  within  a  day  or  two,  and  she  made  not 
the  least  reference  to  that  perfectly  definite  arrangement; 
nor  had  she  noticed  the  manner  of  his  last  letter.  Perhaps 
she  preferred  to  ignore  it?  Perhaps  she  had  not  read  it? 

A  feeling  of  lassitude  came  over  him  that  afternoon,  very 
different  in  kind  from  the  vexed  inertia  that  was  so  fa- 
miliar. His  mentor  seemed  to  be  withdrawn  from  him,  and 
he  was  no  longer  harassed  by  the  thought  of  little  duties 
left  unperformed.  He  found  this  new  sense  of  ease  quite 
distinctly  pleasant.  All  his  bothers  were  over.  He  was  no 
longer  perplexed  and  harried  by  the  necessity  to  do  the 
things  he  disliked,  such  infernally  worrying  things  as  order- 
ing the  Givers'  jingle,  for  example.  He  could  let  things 
slide  now ;  nothing  mattered.  He  had  often  wondered  how 
it  was  that  any  man  could  sink  as  low  as  that  fellow  Wood- 
house  had  sunk.  Well,  he  knew  at  last.  Woodhouse  and 


168  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

his  like  had  no  mentor.  Lucky  devils!  He  was  a  lucky 
devil  himself  now.  He  had  only  one  fear — his  cursed  men- 
tor might  return. 

But  the  days  passed,  and  still  he  remained  in  peace.  He 
did  no  work,  he  ate  his  meals  anyhow,  he  gave  up  shaving, 
and  his  conscience  was  free  of  the  least  offence.  The 
weather  had  broken  up,  but  the  wind  was  in  the  north-east ; 
and  although  it  blew  the  rain  in  under  the  front  door,  the 
sitting-room  fire  did  not  smoke. 

And  with  this  blessed  change  of  mood,  a  new  relation  to 
life  generally  was  growing  up.  He  was,  he  thought,  becom- 
ing more  real,  himself — he  was  certainly  vexed  no  longer  by 
any  consciousness  of  hypocrisy — and  at  the  same  time  the 
things  about  him  were  becoming  almost  fantastically  unreal. 
He  often  looked  at  the  furniture  in  his  sitting-room  and 
wondered  why  it  was  there.  Plainly,  it  had  no  connection 
whatever  with  himself.  Once  or  twice  his  interest  was 
sufficiently  stirred  to  get  up  and  feel  the  outlines  of  a  chair- 
back,  but  he  found  that  his  sense  of  touch  afforded  him  no 
more  satisfaction  than  the  sight  of  the  thing.  The  chair 
might  be  there  or  it  might  not ;  he  could  not  possibly  be  sure 
either  way. 

He  had  the  same  feeling,  intensified  if  anything,  about  the 
cliffs  and  the  sea.  They  had  all  the  appearance  of  being  il- 
lusory. The  "head"  at  Mawgan  Forth,  for  example,  was 
just  a  flat  outline  against  the  sky  in  some  lights.  Was  that 
the  real  cliff,  or  was  it  more  real  when  you  saw  the  crevices 
and  broken  spurs  of  rock  in  the  full  sunshine?  The  prob- 
lem did  not  worry  him  in  any  way,  it  merely  furnished  ma- 
terial for  idle  speculation ;  but  he  found  that  he  was  forming 
a  habit  of  touching  things.  One  night  he  got  out  of  bed  to 
touch  the  chest  of  drawers.  .  .  . 

His  boot-soles  were  wearing  so  thin  that  he  walked  with 
great  circumspection,  avoiding  the  stones.  His  boots  were 
certainly  becoming  less  real,  he  thought,  and  chuckled  over 
what  seemed  to  him  a  very  subtle  point  of  humour. 


SOLITUDE  169 

IX 

On  Sunday  morning,  the  fourteenth  of  November,  he 
awoke  to  a  knowledge  of  change  and  oppression.  The  old 
note  of  the  wind  had  returned,  the  rain  was  slashing  at  the 
window  by  his  bed,  and  he  could  hear,  downstairs,  the  pro- 
testing chatter  of  the  kitchen  door.  But  these  ominous 
symptoms  threatened  him  at  the  moment  less  than  some 
vague  disaster;  the  realisation  still  hung  on  the  border  of 
consciousness,  a  threat  that  suddenly  sprung  up,  a  vivid 
cause  for  self-denunciation. 

"Good  God,  I've  never  had  those  boots  mended !"  he  said 
aloud. 

He  sat  up  in  bed  and  rumpled  his  already  untidy  hair. 
Those  boots  were  in  the  foreground  of  his  mind,  but  only 
as  the  head  of  a  procession  of  neglected  things — among 
them  an  unopened  parcel  of  books  from  the  Daily  Post. 
Further  reflection  disclosed  the  fact  that  he  had  written  a 
short  note  to  Betty  some  days  ago  and  had,  as  yet,  received 
no  reply. 

He  shook  his  head  wearily.  Life  was  revealed  to  him  as 
one  enormous  task  that  he  had  no  energy  to  tackle.  Ten 
days'  complete  idleness  had  left  him  hopelessly  in  arrears. 
He  could  never  make  up  all  that  lost  time,  never  straighten 
out  the  infinite  muddle  of  his  affairs.  If  only  he  could  be- 
gin again,  he  would  have  a  chance.  If  he  could  leave  Eng- 
land, cut  himself  off  from  all  the  old  associations,  and  start 
by  working  as  a  carpenter,  say,  or  even  a  common  labourer. 

In  any  case  he  would  have  to  get  a  new  pair  of  boots,  and 
that  was  out  of  the  question  to-day.  He  could  not  drive  to 
Newquay  in  this  weather — "Atlantic  weather,"  he  called  it, 
with  a  certain  pride  in  its  violence.  The  other  end  of  the 
room  was  simply  flooded. 

He  got  out  of  bed  reluctantly  and  closed  the  farther  win- 
dow, stood  shivering  for  a  moment,  and  then  went  into  one 
of  the  front  rooms  and  had  a  cold  bath. 

Presently  he  stood  for  a  time  before  the  glass,  and  con- 
templated the  repulsive  sight  of  his  ten-day-old  beard. 


170  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

He  found  that  his  razors  were  rusting;  he  had  meant  to 
put  some  grease  on  them,  and  had  forgotten,  or  thought  of 
it  at  the  wrong  moment  or  something.  Nevertheless,  he 
shaved  after  breakfast,  and,  as  he  afterwards  ruefully 
rubbed  his  sore  skin,  reflected  that  he  would  have  to  buy  a 
couple  of  new  razors  when  he  went  into  Newquay.  There 
were  several  things  that  he  must  get  when  he  went  into 
Newquay;  but  that  journey  was  out  of  the  question  to-day. 

He  did  not  attempt  to  light  the  sitting-room  fire.  When 
he  went  into  that  room  after  breakfast,  he  found  the  ashes 
of  last  night  blown  over  the  hearthrug,  and  a  strong  smell  of 
soot  prevailed.  He  opened  the  window  and  took  the  un- 
opened parcel  of  books  into  the  kitchen. 

The  Atlantic  weather  had  apparently  come  to  stay,  but  as 
the  week  went  by  he  recovered  a  little  courage,  a  faint 
energy  to  oppose  the  tremendous  conflict  of  life.  He  had 
begun  a  kind  of  diary  that  gave  him  a  little  relief.  He  knew 
that  it  was  carelessly  written,  and  he  wished  that  he  had 
sufficient  powers  of  concentration  to  make  it  a  worthy  testa- 
ment; but  his  mind  was  too  dull  and  tired  to  do  that — no 
metaphors  came  to  him — and  at  least  it  was  something  to 
have  a  means  of  expression,  however  feeble. 

He  had  only  one  desperate  hope  left  now — the  hope  that 
Betty  might  be  induced  to  come  and  help  him.  He  would 
not  take  the  next  step,  he  would  leave  her,  as  he  had  prom- 
ised, uninfluenced ;  but  he  could  write  to  her  day  by  day  in 
this  diary  of  his,  and  possibly  he  might  send  it  to  her  in 
certain  eventualities.  He  need  not  decide  that  as  yet.  In 
any  event,  he  would  wait  until  she  wrote  to  him  again. 

And  at  night,  when  the  wind  had  shifted  a  point  or  two, 
and  he  could  light  the  sitting-room  fire,  he  had  moments 
that  were  glorified  by  a  mirage  in  which  Betty  wrote  at  last 
to  say  that  she  was  coming ;  that  everything  was  arranged ; 
that  she  could  no  longer  bear  to  live  without  him;  that  he 
was  to  meet  her  by  the  6.25  at  Newquay.  He  pictured  all 
the  essential  details,  even  his  explanations  to  the  Olvers 
and  Millie  Curnow.  He  had  told  them  long  ago  that  he 
was  married,  and  that  his  wife  might  come  to  join  him  later 


SOLITUDE  171 

on,  and  had  skilfully  intimated  money  difficulties,  giving 
them  a  hint  that  his  wife  was  working  in  London.  .  .  . 

Her  letter  came  to  him  on  Thursday  morning.  Every- 
thing had  looked  brighter  that  day.  The  wind  had  gone 
down,  and  he  had  been  able  to  light  the  sitting-room  fire. 
He  was  writing  a  review  when  the  postman  came,  but  Jacob 
stopped  and  talked  to  him  for  a  minute  or  two  about  the 
weather,  although  that  long-expected  letter  was  come  at 
last,  and  his  hand  tingled  to  the  pressure  of  it. 

He  laughed  when  he  had  read  it.  She  suggested  another 
six  months  of  waiting!  He  wondered  what  she  would  say 
if  she  could  know  what  six  months  would  mean  to  him.  Six 
months  more  of  this !  Oh,  well,  that  settled  it !  He  would 
write  and  send  her  his  diary,  and  then.  .  .  . 

He  found  his  letter  very  difficult  to  express.  The  old  per- 
plexity had  returned.  He  was  using  compulsion.  This  was 
the  thing  he  had  always  meant  to  avoid.  But  he  was  deter- 
mined that  she  must  know,  must  realise  what  he  had  gone 
through.  His  diary  wouFd  give  her  some  idea  of  it.  He 
need  not  write  it  again.  But  what  ought  he  to  do?  What 
was  the  real,  right  thing?  He  found  that  he  was  aimlessly 
drawing  capital  "B's"  on  the  paper  in  front  of  him,  and 
got  up  quickly. 

"I'll  go  down  to  Livelow  and  look  at  the  sea,"  he  said. 
"And  perhaps  I  shall  never  come  back,"  he  added.  .  .  . 

He  had  never  seen  quite  so  magnificent  a  sea  as  the  one 
that  was  breaking  against  the  cliffs  of  Livelow  that  morn- 
ing. The  wind  had  fallen  to  a  mere  breeze,  and  huge  rollers 
were  coming  in,  their  crests  no  longer  teased  and  broken 
by  the  harry  of  the  following  gale. 

The  immense  roar  and  crash  of  the  breakers  as  they  burst 
tremendously  against  the  cliff,  or  leapt  and  fell  tumultuously 
over  some  obstruction  of  submerged  rock,  put  new  heart 
into  him.  Here  was  incalculable  force  and  energy,  the  won- 
derful meeting  of  power  and  resistance.  He  leaned  farther 
over  the  cliff's  edge  and  let  a  fierce  uprush  of  fine  spray 
sting  his  face.  This  was  the  meaning  of  life — to  oppose 
with  all  one's  might,  no  matter  whether  one's  expenditure  of 


172  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

force  showed  any  result  or  not.  For  how  many  thousand 
years  had  this  wonderful  sea  battered  vainly  at  these  basalt 
rocks?  The  struggle  had  gone  on  for  all  known  time,  and 
would  continue  while  wind  and  sea  and  earth  remained.  .  .  . 

He  remembered  that  he  had  sat  on  this  very  rock  years 
ago,  and  how  the  sight  of  the  sea  had  put  fresh  heart  into 
him.  "I  have  not  lost  my  ideals,"  he  had  thought  then; 
"they  stretch  out  beyond  the  limits  of  this  little  world." 
And  was  that  not  still  true  ?  He  had  been  so  concerned  with 
the  small  worries  of  life  that  he  had  forgotten  his  ideals. 
Now  he  must  recover  them.  And  the  essential  for  him,  the 
one  clear  need,  was  to  fight.  Oh!  he  would  fight;  not  for 
any  temporary  gain,  but  for  the  welfare  of  his  soul,  for  the 
sake  of  those  ideals  that  were  beyond  space  and  time.  He 
would  go  on  battering  at  the  senseless  rocks,  and  be  content 
with  the  knowledge  that  he  had  done  what  he  could.  He 
would  not  commit  suicide,  but  he  would  send  his  diary  to 
Betty;  he  would  cease  this  useless  prevarication  and  make 
one  bold  attempt  to  win  her.  If  she  came,  and  if  she  after- 
wards regretted  her  coming,  he  would  take  the  responsibil- 
ity, shoulder  it,  live  with  it,  if  necessary.  .  .  . 

Thank  God  for  this  great  splendid  sea !  .  .  . 

His  mind  was  so  full  of  resolution  that  he  could  not  pause 
to  re-write  his  letter,  but  on  re-reading  it  he  realised  that 
Betty  might  find  that  it  contained  the  threat  of  suicide.  He 
could  not  allow  that  misapprehension.  He  was  going  to 
live  now,  even  if  he  had  to  face  the  annoyance  of  old  ladies 
and  invalids  in  a  Newquay  boarding-house.  So  he  added  a 
paragraph  which  he  thought  would  at  least  prevent  any  mis- 
understanding on  that  score.  He  left  all  the  disfigurements, 
the  line  of  meaningless  capital  letters  and  the  rest,  because 
he  regarded  them  as  evidence  of  his  late  weakness;  and 
Betty  must  know  everything.  He  would  not  actually 
threaten  her,  but  she  must  understand.  .  .  . 

And  there  were  forty-eight  hours  or  so  to  be  lived  through 
before  he  could  receive  an  answer.  He  turned  back  with 
splendid  determination  to  his  unfinished  review. 


SOLITUDE  173 


He  had  not  received  a  telegram  since  he  had  been  in  Tre- 
varrian,  and  did  not  recognise  the  un-uniformed  boy  on  a 
bicycle  who  rode  over  from  Mawgan  Post  Office. 

"A  telegram?  For  me?"  he  asked  stupidly,  and  won- 
dered vaguely  if  it  were  from  Meredith.  And  even  when  he 
had  read  the  message :  "Coming  by  eleven  train  meet  me 
Newquay. — Betty,"  he  could  not  at  once  grasp  the  wonder- 
ful significance  of  it. 

"There  can't  possibly  be  any  answer,"  he  said  to  the  boy, 
who  was  interestedly  watching  the  geese  on  the  common. 

The  impossible  had  come  to  pass,  and  the  suddenness  of 
it  almost  stunned  him.  But,  by  Gad!  he  had  a  lot  to  do 
before  she  came — and  she  was  coming  to-day,  to-day — she 
would  be  there  to  dinner  that  same  blessed  evening !  Good 
Lord!  he  must  tell  Millie  to  get  everything  ready,  and  he 
must  order  the  Givers'  waggonette.  He  must  get  some 
bacon  in  Newquay,  and  Heaven  knew  what  else!  Millie 
would  know.  .  .  . 

"Oh!  I  want  the  waggonette,  if  I  can  have  it — I  must 
have  it,  if  possible,"  he  said  to  Mrs.  Olver  a  quarter  of  an 
hour  later,  "to  meet  the  6.25  at  Newquay  to-night.  My 
wife's  coming.  I  had  a  wire  this  morning.  She's — she's 
given  up  her  work  in  London,  and  is  coming  down  to  spend 
the  rest  of  the  winter  here.  We — we  really  can't  get  on 
without  one  another  any  longer,  you  know.  And  can  I  have 
the  waggonette  about  four  o'clock,  because  I've  a  tremen- 
dous lot  of  things  to  get  in  Newquay  before  the  train's  due  ? 
Some  boots  for  myself — and  heaps  of  things." 

Mrs.  Olver  showed  no  surprise  nor  any  interest  in  his 
extraordinary  news.  One  of  her  best  fowls  had  been 
accidentally  killed  that  morning. 


BOOK  IV 
THE  COLLABORATORS 


JACOB'S  shopping  in  Newquay  was  finished  long  before 
Betty's  train  was  due.  He  had  been  nervous  and  anx- 
ious during  the  drive,  making  repeated  calculations  of  the 
time  he  supposed  would  be  necessary  for  all  that  he  had  to 
do,  and  chafing  at  the  slowness  of  the  Givers'  horse,  the 
steepness  of  the  hills,  and  the  complete  lack  of  sympathy 
exhibited  by  Andrews,  the  driver.  Now  he  found  himself 
with  at  least  fifty  endless  minutes  to  be  lived  through,  be- 
fore the  6.25  could  reasonably  be  expected. 

He  found  a  time-table  in  a  dark  corner  of  the  station, 
and  explored  it  with  the  help  of  a  match.  She  would  be 
between  St.  Blazey  and  Luxulyan  at  that  moment,  he  cal- 
culated, and  he  made  a  note  of  the  times  at  which  she  would 
reach  Bugle,  Roche,  and  St.  Columb  Road.  He  wondered 
whether  she  would  be  a  little  thrilled  by  those  queer  names, 
as  he  himself  had  been  more  than  three  months  before; 
whether  she  would  feel,  as  he  had,  that  she  was  coming  into 
a  strange,  romantic  country? 

But  when  he  could  see  the  headlights  of  the  incoming 
train,  he  felt  suddenly  unprepared ;  he  almost  found  it  in  his 
heart  to  wish  that  he  might  have  had  a  little  more  time  be- 
fore he  greeted  her.  Not  until  then  had  he  realised  the  sense 
of  her  actual  presence.  He  had  spoken  to  her  a  hundred 
times  in  imagination  during  that  interminable  period  of  wait- 
ing ;  but  now  she  seemed  to  him,  in  some  indefinable  way,  a 
stranger,  difficult  to  address,  a  little  intimidating.  .  .  . 

She  was  in  the  through  carriage  at  the  back  of  the  train, 
and  she  was  already  standing  on  the  platform  before  he  saw 
her.  For  one  moment  he  had  thought  that  she  was  not 

177 


178  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

there,  and  the  awful  blankness  of  dread  that  had  fallen  on 
him  had  instantly  dissipated  any  desire  to  postpone  her 
coming.  Nevertheless,  he  was  very  self-conscious  as  he 
said — 

"So  you've  really  come?"  He  could  not  have  used  any 
term  of  endearment  just  then,  nor  even  have  spoken  her 
name. 

She  hardly  looked  at  him. 

"There's  a  dress-basket  thing  in  the  van,"  she  said,  with- 
out any  form  of  greeting.  "Could  you  find  it?" 

He  was  glad  of  an  excuse  for  some  activity,  some  oppor- 
tunity to  display  his  apprehension  of  her  wish  to  postpone 
any  approach  to  more  intimate  conversation  until  they  were 
alone. 

He  missed  her  again  when  he  had  found  the  dress-basket 
and  a  porter  to  carry  it  out  to  the  waggonette,  but  as  he 
stared  round  with  some  bewilderment,  she  emerged  from 
the  shadow  of  the  wall  under  which  she  had  been  standing, 
and  came  up  to  him. 

"I  couldn't  see  you,"  he  said,  with  a  laugh  that  was  meant 
to  be  reassuringly  commonplace,  but  that,  even  to  his  own 
ears,  sounded  a  trifle  hysterical.  "Here,  let  me  have  that," 
he  went  on  quickly,  and  took  the  valise  she  was  holding. 
"Nothing  else,  is  there?" 

She  shook  her  head.  "We  have  to  drive,  don't  we  ?"  she 
asked. 

"Drive?  Rather!"  he  said;  and,  finding  speech  essential 
to  cover  his  embarrassment,  he  continued :  "It's  over  four 
miles,  you  know,  even  if  we  go  by  Watergate  Bay,  and  I 
don't  know  whether  Andrews  will  care  to  risk  the  hill  going 
back.  The  other  way,  by  Mawgan  Cross,  is  nearly  six,  and 
there  are  a  beastly  lot  of  gates.  .  .  ."  He  had  a  subject 
here,  and  made  the  most  of  it,  including  Andrews  in  his 
audience,  when  they  reached  the  waggonette,  by  a  discussion 
of  routes. 

"If  you  don't  mind  walking  up  the  hill,"  he  said  to  Betty, 
when  some  understanding  had  been  reached,  "we'll  go  by 
Watergate.  It's  much  quicker." 


THE    COLLABORATORS  179 

She  shook  her  head  again,  and  then,  as  if  afraid  her  sign 
might  be  ambiguous,  she  added :  "I  don't  mind." 

"I  expect  you're  pretty  tired,"  he  began,  when  they  had 
started. 

She  nodded  faintly,  keeping  her  eyes  down.  She  had  not 
yet  looked  at  him,  so  far  as  he  knew.  She  seemed  afraid  to 
speak. 

"You're  not  ill  ?"  he  asked,  dropping  his  voice. 

They  were  sitting  facing  each  other,  close  under  the  lee  of 
Andrews'  back,  and  she  gave  a  quick  glance  up  at  that  in- 
efficient shelter  as  she  once  more  answered  him  by  a  move- 
ment of  her  head. 

Jacob  understood  her  suggestion  that  her  every  word 
must  be  overheard,  but  he  wondered  if  her  policy  were  a 
wise  one.  If  Andrews  were  able  to  draw  any  inferences 
from  their  behaviour,  it  was  surely  better  for  them  to  talk. 
They  were  supposed  to  have  been  married  for  years,  and  a 
long  separated,  and  presumably  desolated,  husband  and  wife 
would  hardly  sit  in  absolute  silence  during  a  tedious  four- 
mile  drive  immediately  after  their  reunion.  He  fumbled  for 
some  reasonable  account  to  lay  before  the  driver,  but  found 
nothing  more  convincing  than — 

"You're  absolutely  tired  out.  .  .  ."  He  said  it  in  a  voice 
that  was  meant  to  reach  Andrews,  but  it  seemed  a  poor 
excuse  for  their  silence,  he  thought. 

"I  am  tired,"  Betty  murmured;  and  after  that  he  tried 
to  contain  the  nervous  excitement  that  with  him  demanded 
speech. 

The  night  had  been  overcast  as  they  drove  out  of  the 
town;  but  as  they  came  into  Forth  the  clouds  were  thin- 
ning, and  a  rising  moon,  some  three  or  four  days  short  of 
the  full,  showed  dimly  through  a  blurred  veil  of  scud.  The 
sea  was  ebbing,  but  still  high  enough  to  cover  the  flat  beach 
and  send  tiny  tidal  waves  up  the  stream  of  the  little  river 
they  were  crossing. 

Jacob,  intensely  conscious  of  everything  about  him,  could 
keep  silence  no  longer. 


180  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

"It  is  rather  a  ripping  place,  don't  you  think?"  he  asked 
in  a  low  voice. 

Betty  had  apparently  been  unaware  of  her  surroundings, 
and  when  he  spoke  she  looked  round  at  the  sea  and  shiv- 
ered. 

"Are  we  nearly  there?"  she  asked. 

"I'm  afraid  not  nearly,"  he  said.  "You're  cold,  aren't 
you?"  and  then,  as  the  waggonette  stopped,  he  added: 
"That's  for  us  to  get  out.  We  shall  have  to  walk  up  this 
hill.  Do  you  mind  ?  It  may  warm  you  a  bit." 

"I  should  like  to  walk,"  she  said ;  and  when  he  had  helped 
her  out  of  the  waggonette,  he  drew  her  hand  through  his 
arm  and  hurried  forward,  so  that  they  might  be  out  of  ear- 
shot of  Andrews  toiling  leadenly  behind  them. 

"You  aren't  sorry  you've  come?"  Jacob  asked  a  trifle 
anxiously,  when  he  judged  that  his  purpose  was  attained. 

She  looked  back  over  her  shoulder. 

"He  can't  possibly  hear,"  pleaded  Jacob,  with  a  first  weak 
suggestion  of  irritation  in  his  voice. 

"No,  of  course  I'm  not  sorry,"  she  said.  And  then: 
"Please  don't  worry  me  yet.  I  shall  be  all  right." 

This  was  an  ominous  beginning,  he  thought,  and  the  glow 
of  life  that  had  come  to  him  since  he  had  felt  the  joy  of  her 
actual  presence,  was  momentarily  chilled  by  a  weak  attack 
of  the  old  perplexity.  "If  she  had  come  against  her 
will.  .  .  ."  But  he  would  not  consider  that  confusing,  use- 
less problem  again.  She  had  come.  She  was  compromised, 
and  no  return  was  possible.  They  must  face  the  future  now 
with  determination,  with  splendid  courage  and  disregard 
of  any  other  opinion.  He  had  said  to  himself  that  he  would 
take  the  responsibility.  And  he  felt  able  to  take  it,  at  this 
very  minute.  He  was  full  of  vigour  and  pride.  He  had 
her,  and  he  meant  to  keep  her. 


He  drew  her  closer  to  him.  "Take  off  your  left  glove," 
he  said;  "I  want  to  give  you  that  ring.  I've  got  it  in  my 
pocket" 


THE    COLLABORATORS  181 

"Must  I  wear  it  ?"  she  asked. 

"Must  you?"  he  said.  "But  Betty  .  .  .  what  do  you 
mean  ?" 

"Have  you  told  the  people  in  the  village  that  we're  mar- 
ried ?"  she  said. 

"I've  told  the  Olvers — the  farmer  and  his  wife,  you  know 
— my  landlord,  and  Millie  Curnow,  the  woman  who  works 
for  me." 

"Of  course  they'll  know  it  isn't  true." 

"Of  course  they  won't."  He  wondered  if  she  was  dread- 
ing her  reception,  the  possibility  of  a  slight.  "I've  abso- 
lutely arranged  all  that,"  he  went  on.  "They  think  that 
we're  awfully  poor,  and  that  you've  been  working  in  Lon- 
don— that  was  true  enough — while  I  came  down  here  to 
write  a  book.  It's  a  likely  enough  story  surely.  Besides, 
you  don't  know  these  people — they're  not  a  bit  curious  about 
one,  in  the  first  place ;  and  then,  Mrs.  Olver,  for  example,  is 
quite  a  broad-minded  woman  in  some  ways,  I  should  think." 

"How  do  you  mean  ?"  asked  Betty. 

He  was  sorry  that  he  had  opened  this  aspect ;  he  saw  now 
that  the  parallel  he  had  had  in  mind  was  hardly  a  compli- 
mentary one;  but  he  tried  to  soften  it  as  well  as  he  could. 

"Oh,  I  only  meant  that  when  I  first  came  she  said  some- 
thing to  me  about  one  of  the  women  in  the  village  who  had 
got  two  illegitimate  children,  and  she  spoke  quite  nicely 
about  her.  She  said  that  she  had  been  unfortunate,  that 
was  all." 

"Why  did  she  mention  her  at  all  ?" 

"She  recommended  her  to  me — to  do  my  work." 

"Is  that  the  woman  you've  got  now — what  was  her 
name  ?" 

"Millie  Curnow.  Yes."  Jacob  was  aware  that  he  had 
undoubtedly  said  the  wrong  thing. 

Betty  withdrew  her  hand  from  his  arm.  "Please  give  me 
the  ring,"  she  said  coldly.  "I'd  sooner  Mrs.  Olver  didn't 
think  me  'unfortunate'  too." 

"Oh,  Betty!  .  .  ."  he  began;  but  he  was  interrupted  by 
the  sound  of  the  waggonette  coming  after  them  at  a  trot. 


182  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

"I  didn't  notice  that  we'd  got  to  the  top  of  the  hill/'  said 
Jacob.  .  .  . 

Undoubtedly  it  was  going  to  be  a  little  difficult.  When 
they  were  on  the  way  again  he  relapsed  into  silence,  and 
tried  to  confront  the  new  trouble  as  he  saw  it.  She  had 
come  to  him  under  stress  of  a  threat,  he  supposed,  and  she 
was  already  regretting  her  sudden  decision.  They  must 
have  this  out  when  they  got  back.  He  could  persuade  her 
then,  convince  her  that  she  had  done  the  right,  the  only 
thing.  They  would  never  have  had  this  horrible  misunder- 
standing if  they  had  been  alone,  if  they  could  have  talked. 
His  analysis  was  cut  short  by  the  touch  of  Betty's  hand  on 
his  knee. 

He  put  out  his  own  hand  eagerly  and  took  hers,  to  find 
that  she  was  not  taking  steps  towards  the  understanding 
that  was  in  his  mind.  She  withdrew  her  hand  and  made  a 
sign  to  him,  touching  her  third  finger. 

He  took  the  ring  from  his  pocket  and  gave  it  to  her.  He 
had  meant  to  put  it  on  for  her,  to  make  some  little  ceremony 
in  the  doing  of  it,  and  he  felt  slightly  aggrieved  by  the  half- 
furtive  way  in  which  she  slipped  it  on  her  finger  and  covered 
it  quickly  by  putting  on  her  glove.  If  only  he  could  explain, 
if  only  he  could  put  his  arms  round  her.  It  would  have 
been  better  in  many  ways  if  he  had  not  met  her  at  the 
station.  .  .  . 

He  made  no  attempt  to  take  her  arm  again  as  they  toiled 
up  the  steep  hill  from  Watergate  Bay.  They  walked  in 
silence,  this  time  behind  the  lumbering  waggonette.  Indeed, 
he  offered  no  further  remark  until  they  were  jolting  over 
the  grass  field  that  led  up  to  the  Trevarrian  house. 

"Here  we  are  at  last,"  he  said  then,  making  an  effort  to 
appear  cheerful.  Millie  Curnow  was  standing  at  the  open 
door,  and  he  wondered  how  Betty  would  greet  her,  or  if  she 
would  greet  her  at  all. 

And  then  one  more  surprise  was  added  to  the  general 
unexpectedness  of  everything  that  had  followed  Betty's 
coming,  for  she  was  suddenly  gracious  and  sweet  to  Millie, 
admired  the  house,  begged  Millie  to  show  her  where  every- 


THE    COLLABORATORS  183 

thing  was  kept,  and,  when  she  addressed  Jacob,  spoke  with 
an  easy  familiarity,  as  if  that  awful  drive  had  completely 
overcome  any  awkwardness  she  might  naturally  have  felt 
after  a  three  months'  absence  from  him. 

He  recovered  his  spirits  at  once.  Everything  would  be  all 
right  now.  He  realised  that  he  was  curiously  nervous  and 
excited  still. 

in 

The  fatigue  that  Betty  had  admitted  so  readily  during  the 
drive  seemed  to  have  wonderfully  vanished.  She  was  full 
of  brisk  energy,  impatient  to  set  about  the  detail  of  house- 
hold management.  She  examined  the  stock  of  china  and  the 
cooking  apparatus,  with  many  comments  on  the  poverty  of 
the  supply.  "How  do  you  manage  without  a  steamer  ?"  she 
asked  Millie.  "And  isn't  there  a  fish-kettle?" 

"We  'ave  to  use  the  saucepan,  mum,"  Millie  explained; 
but  she  appeared  to  sympathise  with  Betty's  criticisms. 

"Oh!  you're  over-civilised,  you  know,"  put  in  Jacob. 
He  had  entered  the  kitchen  with  no  scruple  as  to  the  fitness 
of  his  presence  there.  That  was  a  familiar  living-room  to 
him. 

"You've  no  business  in  here  at  all,"  said  Betty.  "The 
front  of  the  house  is  your  place." 

"Oh!  I  have  all  my  meals  in  here,"  he  returned;  "and 
when  the  wind's  in  the  south-west,  I  sometimes  have  to  sit 
here  all  day." 

"Well,  you  won't  now,"  said  Betty,  with  a  laugh.  "You 
go  in  and  clear  that  table  in  the  other  room,  so  that  we  can 
lay  the  supper." 

"Is  it  worth  while  ?  .  .  ."  he  began ;  but  she  clapped  her 
hands  at  him,  and  cut  him  short  by  saying : 

"That's  my  business.  Now,  will  you  go  and  clear  up  some 
of  the  mess  on  that  table  of  yours?" 

He  went  with  a  delighted  sense  that  no  trouble  could  ever 
touch  him  in  future,  if  only  Betty  would  be  happy.  And  as 
he  cleared  the  books  and  papers  from  his  table,  and  made 
a  praiseworthy  attempt  to  straighten  and  tidy  the  room 


184  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

generally,  it  seemed  to  him  that  he  and  she  could  hardly  fail 
to  be  happy  there,  with  that  jolly  house  all  to  themselves, 
and  the  glorious  country  and  sea  outside — all  new  ground 
for  her,  to  be  explored  in  his  company.  This  was  life,  he 
thought,  and  savoured  the  exquisite  intensity  of  it — the 
present,  realisable  happiness,  the  perfect  enjoyment  of  the 
moment  that  did  not  depend  on  anticipation. 

When  he  had  put  the  room  straight  and  swept  up  the 
hearth  with  a  newspaper — Betty,  he  knew,  hated  an  untidy 
grate — he  stood  on  the  hearthrug  and  added  further  redun- 
dancies to  express  his  realisation  of  perfect  satisfaction. 
They  had  the  whole  of  life  before  them,  he  reflected  glee- 
fully, full  of  boundless  possibilities  of  enjoyment,  and  yet 
there  was  no  need  for  impatient  longings  after  some  ideal 
of  future  achievement  that  might  never  be  fulfilled.  He 
was  content.  He  wanted  nothing  more  than  life  with  Betty 
in  this  delightful,  inconvenient  house.  It  was  enough  that 
she  was  there  in  the  kitchen,  cooking  the  fish  that  he  had 
brought  from  Newquay.  He  might  go  in  and  see  her  at 
any  moment,  if  he  chose.  .  .  .  The  bliss  of  it  was  almost 
too  great  to  be  borne.  .  .  . 

Millie  laid  the  supper.  He  had  expected  Betty  to  do  that, 
but  he  was  not  impatient.  She  must  come  soon,  and  he 
could  revel  in  that  knowledge,  almost  wishing  that  this 
period  of  happy  waiting  could  be  prolonged. 

And  when  she  came,  apologising  for  the  time  she  had 
taken,  and  explaining  the  deficiencies  of  his  household 
requisites,  she  was  still  in  the  same  brisk,  practical  mood  she 
had  shown  since  she  had  first  set  foot  in  the  house.  He  had 
not  yet  dared  a  single  caress,  nor  any  approach  to  one — 
unless  the  holding  of  her  arms  on  the  Forth  Hill  could  be 
counted — and  this  preoccupation  with  housewifely  duties 
seemed  to  hold  him  at  arm's  length.  Nevertheless,  as  he 
passed  round  the  table  to  the  place  that  had  been  laid  for 
him,  he  let  his  hand  rest  for  a  moment  on  her  shoulder. 
And  if  she  had  given  him  the  least  sign  of  encouragement, 
he  was  ready  then  to  postpone  the  eating  of  his  supper  in- 


THE    COLLABORATORS  185 

definitely;  but  she  appeared  to  be  unconscious  that  he  had 
even  touched  her. 

"We  mustn't  be  too  long,"  she  said,  when  he  had  sat 
down.  "Millie  has  promised  to  stay,  just  this  once,  to  help 
me  wash  up  afterwards." 

"Need  you  do  that  to-night?"  he  asked.  He  wanted  now 
to  be  alone  with  her,  to  tell  her  all  that  he  had  endured,  and 
all  the  relief  of  her  coming.  He  wanted  to  be  near  her 
again — not  the  physical  nearness  of  an  embrace,  but  the 
sense  that  he  and  she  understood  one  another,  that  they 
were  at  the  outset  of  a  wonderful  life  together,  with  com- 
mon aims,  sharing  the  delight  of  each  other's  love  and 
understanding. 

"Oh,  we're  going  to  do  things  properly  now,"  replied 
Betty.  "I  can  guess  the  awful  hole-and-corner  way  you've 
been  living  by  yourself.  I  may  be  over-civilised,  as  you  said, 
but  you've  been  simply  a  savage !" 

"It  wasn't  worth  while,  you  see,  to  be  anything  else," 
Jacob  said.  "Of  course,  now  you've  come  .  .  ." 

"It'll  take  me  a  week  to  get  things  straight,"  she  put  in 
quickly,  and  launched  out  into  an  account  of  all  the  things 
she  proposed  to  do  in  the  house,  indicating  his  share  in  the 
preparations  for  the  new  regime  by  saying  that  he  would 
certainly  have  to  get  more  cooking  utensils  from  Mrs.  Olver, 
or,  failing  that,  go  over  to  Newquay  and  buy  some. 

"Oh,  we'll  buy  'em !"  Jacob  said.  "They'll  be  ours  then, 
and  I  don't  suppose  old  Mrs.  Olver  has  got  anything  to 
spare." 

Betty  thought  they  might  try  Mrs.  Olver  first.  "We 
aren't  so  rich  as  all  that,"  she  added. 

The  meal  was  soon  finished.  When  Jacob  protested  that 
she  had  hardly  eaten  anything,  she  excused  herself  first  by 
saying  that  she  had  had  lunch  in  the  train,  and  then  by  the 
statement  that  she  never  could  eat  directly  after  a  long 
journey.  And  she  cut  short  his  reply  by  getting  up  and 
packing  the  black  tin  tray  that  had  been  left  on  a  chair  by 
the  door. 

"Look  here,  can't  I  help?"  asked  Jacob. 


186  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

"You'd  only  hinder,"  Betty  said.  "You  stop  here  and 
smoke.  I  shan't  be  long." 

But  it  seemed  to  Jacob  that  she  was  never  coming  back. 
Surely  it  did  not  usually  take  all  that  time  to  wash  up  a  few 
supper  things!  His  mind  was  no  longer  content  to  con- 
template his  present  bliss;  he  was  a  little  anxious  as  to 
Betty's  attitude  towards  himself.  She  had  been  so  terribly 
matter-of-fact  since  she  had  arrived,  and  he  wanted  the 
relief  of  that  long  talk  which  was  to  inaugurate  their  perfect 
understanding,  the  beginning  of  their  new  life.  Without 
question,  his  own  life  had  begun  to-day. 

He  got  up  once  or  twice  and  went  to  the  door.  He  could 
hear  the  sound  of  voices  in  the  kitchen,  and  wondered  what 
Betty  and  Millie  had  found  to  talk  about.  He  was  glad, 
nevertheless,  that  Betty  had  not  treated  Millie  as  an  ordinary 
servant. 

It  was  ten  o'clock  when  he  heard  the  back-door  slam,  and 
knew  that  Millie  had  gone  at  last.  He  sat  quite  still  and 
waited.  He  felt  unaccountably  nervous  now  that  the  mo- 
ment had  come.  There  was  no  wind  to-night,  and  every- 
thing was  extraordinarily  still.  He  could  hear  his  heart 
beating. 

The  sound  of  the  kitchen-door  startled  him.  She  was 
coming.  He  heard  her  footsteps  in  the  passage — slow,  re- 
luctant footsteps,  they  sounded  to  him.  She  hesitated  at  the 
door,  and  then  he  heard  her  run  upstairs. 

The  sudden  disappointment  stirred  a  feeling  of  resent- 
ment in  him.  He  could  not  bear  to  sit  still  another  instant, 
and  began  to  pace  restlessly  up  and  down  the  room.  He 
remembered  how,  many  months  ago,  before  there  had  been 
any  understanding  between  him  and  Betty,  he  had  paced  the 
Montague  Place  drawing-room  waiting  for  her.  But  this 
was  a  thousand  times  more  agonising.  What  could  she  be 
doing  upstairs?  What  should  he  do  if  she  did  not  come 
down?  He  looked  at  the  repulsively  uneven  surface  of  the 
sofa,  and  wondered  if  he  could  manage  to  sleep  on  it. 

He  went  to  the  door  again  and  listened.  He  could  hear 
no  sound  in  all  that  quiet  house,  and  when  desperately  he 


THE    COLLABORATORS  187 

called  "Betty!"  his  voice  sounded  discordantly  loud  and 
harsh. 

She  did  not  answer  him  at  once,  but  when  he  had  sum- 
moned up  courage  to  intrude  a  second  time  on  that  forbid- 
ding silence,  he  heard  her  say:  "All  right,  I'm  coming." 
She  must  have  spoken  the  words  in  her  ordinary  voice,  but 
every  syllable  was  audible,  and  he  knew  that  she  must  have 
heard  him  when  he  had  first  called  to  her.  He  felt  chilled 
and  miserable.  He  went  over  to  the  fire  and  knelt  on  the 
hearthrug.  What  could  be  the  matter?  Had  he  offended 
her  in  any  way?  .  .  . 

When  he  heard  her  coming  slowly,  quietly,  down  the 
stairs  he  waited  until  he  knew  that  she  must  be  standing  in 
the  doorway  before  he  got  up  and  turned  towards  her.  He 
looked  at  her  keenly,  wondering  if  she  had  been  crying,  but 
he  could  see  no  mark  of  tears  on  her  face — only  that  same 
look  of  resolute  aloofness  she  had  worn  during  the  drive 
from  Newquay. 

It  came  to  him  that  he  had  been  a  fool,  that  he  should  at 
least  have  had  another  bed  made  up.  Perhaps  it  was  not 
too  late  now.  At  the  last  resort  there  was  that  lumpy  sofa. 

He  took  out  his  cigarette-case  and  lighted  a  cigarette. 
"I  expect  you're  frightfully  tired,"  he  said,  with  an  effort 
to  be  casual.  "And,  I  say,  I  can  perfectly  well  sleep  on  the 
sofa  to-night." 

IV 

She  came  into  the  room  and  sat  down  in  one  of  the  two 
uncomfortable  armchairs  by  the  fireplace. 

"I  think  I  should  like  a  cigarette,  too,"  she  said,  and  held 
out  her  hand  towards  him  with  a  gesture  that  might  have 
been  conciliatory. 

Jacob  preferred  to  regard  it  as  a  part  of  her  request  for  a 
cigarette,  and  gave  her  his  case  and  a  box  of  matches.  If  he 
had,  in  a  sense,  compelled  her  to  come  down  here,  she  must 
understand  that  he  had  no  intention  of  presuming  on  her 
confidence  in  him.  She  must  realise  that  she  was  still  a  per- 
fectly free  agent,  that  if  she  preferred  to  live  apart  from 


188  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

him  in  this  house,  he  would  not  urge  her  to  any  relation  she 
was  not  prepared  to  enter  upon.  He  was  content  to  wait,  if 
only  she  would  stay. 

He  sat  down  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  fireplace  and 
tried  to  find  delicate  phrases  to  express  his  attitude.  For 
quite  five  minutes  they  smoked  in  silence,  and  then  Jacob 
said,  somewhat  with  the  feeling  of  continuing  an  old  con- 
versation : 

"I  do  want  you  to  stay,  but  I  want  nothing  else  until  you 
are — well,  until  you  feel  as  I  do  about  it." 

She  was  leaning  forward,  staring  into  the  fire,  and  she 
turned  her  head  and  looked  at  him  for  an  instant  before  she 
said: 

"I  don't  mind.    It  can't  make  any  difference  now." 

*'Oh!  but  it  can  make  all  the  difference,"  he  returned. 
"It  does  make  all  the  difference  to  me."  He  waited  for  her 
to  answer  him,  and  then,  as  she  made  no  sign,  he  went  on : 
"Why  did  you  come,  if  you  felt  like  this  ?" 

"You  frightened  me,"  she  said. 

"Frightened  you?" 

She  nodded.    "I  thought  you  were  going  to  kill  yourself." 

"But  I  said  I  wouldn't,  quite  definitely,  in  my  letter." 

"I  know.  I  hardly  realised  that  at  the  time.  It  was  that 
diary  you  sent  me." 

"Were  you  only  frightened  because  you  felt  the  responsi- 
bility rested  with  you,  because  you  had  promised?" 

She  shook  her  head  impatiently. 

"You  did  care  what  became  of  me?"  he  asked. 

"Of  course." 

"But,  then,  why  .  .  .?" 

"Your  letter,"  she  said,  "made  me  so  sorry  for  you.  You 
seemed  so  lonely  and  so  deserted.  I  cried  over  it." 

"Then  you  do  care?    For  me  ?"  he  ventured. 

She  threw  away  the  end  of  her  cigarette  and  looked  at 
him,  wrinkling  her  forehead  in  a  perplexed  frown. 

"All  the  way  down  in  the  train,"  she  said,  "I  was  won- 
dering if  I  should  be  too  late.  It  was  silly,  I  know ;  but  I 
thought  of  you  as  being  weak  and  ill,  and  somehow  helpless. 


THE    COLLABORATORS  189 

I  kept  thinking  of  that  all  those  hours,  and  it  saved  me  from 
worrying  about  what  I  had  done.  It  made  me  feel  that  I 
had  to  come.  And  then  .  .  ." 

She  stopped,  and  he  prompted  her  with  a  murmured 
"Yes?" 

"Oh !  you  looked  so  brown,  so  strong  and  well,  .  .  .  and 
.  .  .  and  confident.  I  felt  as  if  I  had  been  taken  in,  that 
you  had  .  .  .  can't  you  understand  ?" 

He  understood  very  well.  He  saw  the  case  against  him- 
self with  revolting  clearness.  And  what  evidence  could  he 
bring  to  refute  the  implied  charge?  Was  it  not  to  a  certain 
extent  justified  ?  He  had  worked  himself  up  into  a  state  of 
nerves,  but  that  state  must  have  been  purely  emotional. 
Since  her  telegram  had  come  that  morning  he  had  been  in 
the  soundest  of  health  and  the  best  of  spirits.  There  was 
nothing  whatever  the  matter  with  him.  Had  there  ever  been 
anything  more  than  a  self-induced  emotionalism? 

"I  wish  you  could  have  seen  me  the  night  before  last,"  he 
faltered. 

"Why?    Were  you  ill  then?" 

"Not  ill ;  not  physically  ill,"  he  said,  struggling  to  give  a 
just  account  of  his  condition.  "It  was  a  state  of  mind,"  he 
continued;  "but  it  is  so  difficult  to  explain.  It  seems  to 
involve  my  whole  life.  I  don't  think  I'm  neurotic" — she 
smiled  faintly  at  that — "but  I've  got  some  inherent  weakness 
of  mind.  There  come  times  when  I  can't  do  things — any- 
thing; when  I  can't  fight  against  .  .  .  life;  when  it's  too 
much  for  me,  and  I  just  want  to  chuck  it,  or  go  right  away 
somewhere,  and  begin  again  without  all  the  handicap  I've 
been  piling  up.  I  know  I'm  making  myself  out  a  pretty  poor 
sort  of  creature,  but  I  can  do  some  things,  and  go  on  doing 
them — only  I  want  encouragement,  help,  love — someone  to 
understand  me.  And  since  my  Aunt  Hester  died  more  than 
ten  years  ago — she  was  my  mother,  practically — I've  never 
had  anyone  who  could  or  would  understand  me.  I  suppose 
you  think  I'm  awfully  weak?"  he  interjected. 

She  smiled  again,  with  a  suggestion  of  grimness  this  time. 
"I  haven't  found  you  weak,"  she  said  quietly.  "Go  on." 


190  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

"Well,  when  I  met  you,"  he  said,  "I  began  a  new  life. 
I'd  never  wanted  anything  before  as  much  as  I  wanted  your 
love.  It  was  the  most  real  thing  that  had  ever  come  to  me. 
The  only  real  thing,  I  think.  And  that's  why  I  could,  in  a 
way,  fight  for -you.  .  .  .  But  when  I  thought  you  weren't 
coming,  I  crumpled  up — mentally.  I  was  worse  than  I  had 
ever  been  before.  I  hadn't  even  the  initiative  to  go  over  to 
Mawgan  and  get  my  boots  mended.  I  wore  them  right 
through  the  soles.  I  just  couldn't.  I  can't  explain  it.  And 
I  didn't  shave,  and  I  ate  all  my  meals  from  the  larder  shelf. 
Nothing  ever  got  cooked  unless  Millie  did  it.  I  didn't  care. 
I  felt  that  my  life  was  over,  that  nothing  mattered  so  long 
as  I  didn't  have  to  make  an  effort." 
^  "Didn't  you  try  to  fight  it  ?"  put  in  Betty. 

"Oh,  that's  just  the  trouble,"  he  explained.  "It's  the 
will  to  fight  anything  that  goes.  It's  a  sort  of  madness — at 
least,  mental  paralysis.  I  felt  as  if  I  hadn't  got  a  soul.  It 
was  much  worse  than  being  physically  ill,  Betty — it  was, 
really.  I'm  sorry  that  I  don't  show  it  in  my  face  now.  Of 
course,  the  brown's  nothing.  You  can  be  dying,  practically, 
and  still  look  brown.  But  although,  apparently,  every  sign 
of  it's  gone  since  I  had  your  telegram,  I  have  been  danger- 
ously ill.  It  was  an  illness  of  the  soul,  perhaps,  but  it  was 
far  more  deadly  than  an  illness  of  the  body.  Oh !  can  you 
understand  ?" 

She  did  not  answer  him  immediately.  She  was  stooping 
towards  the  fire,  her  hands  up  to  her  face.  "Wouldn't  any- 
one else  have  done  as  well  ?"  she  asked  at  last  in  a  low  voice. 

He  guessed  what  was  in  her  mind.  He  had  been  mar- 
ried, and  he  had  told  her  also  of  his  young  love  for  Made- 
line. He  had  had  two  women,  at  least,  in  his  life,  and  had 
parted  from  both  of  them.  His  need  that  he  had  tried  to 
explain  had  not  been*  satisfied  by  his  earlier  loves.  It  might 
be  that  he  would  tire  again ;  that  his  desire  was  nothing 
more  than  a  longing  for  a  temporary  stimulus;  that  any 
other  decently  suitable  woman  might  have  filled  that  need 
of  his.  And  he  knew  that  no  explanation  or  protestations 
could  possibly  carry  conviction. 


THE    COLLABORATORS  191 

"I  can  only  say  'No,'  "  he  said  simply.  "But  if  you  feel 
like  that,  I  am,  as  I  said  before,  quite  content  that  we  should 
live  apart.  You  know  what  I  mean.  There  are  four  other 
bedrooms  here.  You  needn't  think  that  I  should  worry  you 
or  that  I  should  blame  you  in  any  way.  I  shouldn't — really 
I  shouldn't." 

She  made  no  attempt  to  answer  that,  so  he  went  on.  "I 
see  how  tremendously  selfish  that  suggestion  is.  You  would 
be  just  as  much  compromised  as  you  are  now,  and  I  should 
have  no  right  whatever  to  keep  you.  I  have  no  right  to  ask 
you,  of  course.  But  I'm  not  standing  on  any  rights.  I  must 
keep  you  here — as  a  housekeeper,  if  you  like ;  but  I  can't  let 
you  go.  I'm  not  pleading,  Betty.  I'm  stating  a  decision. 
I  must  have  you  near  me.  It  just  makes  the  difference 
between  heaven  and  hell." 

Betty  leaned  back  in  her  chair  and  smiled — a  tender  smile 
now,  the  smile  he  had  longed  to  see  for  three  months.  "Oh, 
you  funny  dear !"  she  said. 

"Am  I?"  He  got  up  and  stood  on  the  hearthrug. 
"Why?"  he  asked  cheerfully. 

"Because  you  are  always  so  careful  to  leave  me  quite  free 
to  go  my  own  way,  and  you  always  end  by  commanding 
me." 

"I  don't  mean  to." 

"But  you  always  do  it,  and  you  always 

"Do  you  hate  it?" 

"Come  here,"  she  said,  and  pointed  to  the  floor  by  her 
chair. 

He  went  and  knelt  at  her  feet,  and  then  gently  put  his 
arms  round  her. 

"I  sometimes  think  you  do  care  for  me  a  little,"  he  said. 
"I'm  hanged  if  I  know  why." 

She  put  her  hands  on  his  shoulders,  and  softly  pushed' 
him  away  from  her,  so  that  she  could  see  his  face.  "Be- 
cause you're  so  weak  and  so  strong,"  she  said ;  and  then  she 
drew  him  close  to  her,  and  bent  over  him,  "and  because  you 
are  such  a  baby,"  she  added,  "and  because  you  do  love  me 
so  much.  You  do,  don't  you  ?  .  .  ." 


192  THE    INVISIBLE   EVENT 

"Darling,  why  are  you  trembling?"  she  asked  him  a 
minute  later. 

He  held  her  closer  still.  "I  think  you're  trembling  a  little, 
too,"  he  said. 

"After  all,  it's  only  you  and  me,"  Betty  murmured,  as  if 
she  sought  some  ultimate  justification. 


XI 
GREAT   ARGUMENT 


SHE  insisted  on  his  sitting  down  to  work  at  nine  o'clock 
the  next  morning. 

"Oh !  I  shan't  do  any  work  to-day — of  all  days,"  he  pro- 
tested. 

"Why  not?"  she  asked. 

"I  want  to  be  with  you  every  minute,"  he  said,  "and  to 
show  you  everything." 

"I  know  where  everything  is  now,"  Betty  said.  "Besides, 
Millie  will  be  here  presently." 

He  laughed  happily.  "I  didn't  mean  that,"  he  explained. 
"I  meant  the  sea  and  the  cliffs,  Livelow  and  Mawgan  Forth, 
and  dozens  of  places.  They've  always  been  beautiful,  but 
now  .  .  ." 

"That's  for  the  afternoons,"  Betty  decided.  "In  the 
morning  we've  got  work,  both  of  us.  It'll  take  me  days  to 
get  this  house  straight,  and  if  you  don't  work,  we  shall  have 
nothing  to  live  on.  Besides,"  she  added,  "we've  plenty  of 
time." 

He  sighed  ecstatically.  "The  rest  of  our  lives,"  he  agreed, 
and  stretched  out  his  hands  towards  her. 

She  took  them  quietly,  and  as  it  were  obediently.  "But 
we  must  work,"  she  said. 

"Of  course,"  he  admitted ;  "but  to-day  .  .  ." 

"We  may  just  as  well  begin  to-day,"  she  said.  "And  I 
want  that  book  of  yours  written.  When  are  you  going  to 
read  me  what  you  have  done  all  these  months  ?" 

"Do  you  want  to  hear  it  before  it's  finished?"  he  asked. 

"Oh,  I  couldn't  possibly  wait  till  then,"  she  said. 

"Well,  we  might  begin  it  after  tea — if  you  feel  like  it, 
that  is,"  he  suggested. 

"I'm  longing  to  hear  it,"  Betty  said;  and  if  her  words 

193 


194.  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

were  simple,  her  tone  was  convincing.  "And  now  you  must 
go  and  write  some  more  of  it,"  she  added. 

His  face  fell.  "I  wish  to  goodness  I  could,"  he  said ;  "but 
if  I  work  this  morning,  I  simply  must  get  on  with  my  re- 
viewing. I'm  frightfully  behind  with  it.  It'll  take  me  quite 
a  week  to  get  straight." 

Her  sense  of  the  practical  did  not  extend  as  yet  to  the 
detail  of  his  work. 

"Must  you?"  she  asked,  answering  his  first  statement. 
"Does  it  matter?" 

"I  must,  absolutely,"  he  said.  "It  matters  tremendously." 
Already  he  was  resigned  to  the  facing  of  a  task  that  a  few 
days  before  had  seemed  overwhelmingly  impossible. 

She  was  still  holding  his  hands,  and  she  swung  them  to 
and  fro  energetically  as  she  answered: 

"Then,  my  dear,  go  and  begin  at  once,  this  very  moment. 
You  shall  have  the  room  all  to  yoursell.  I  won't  interrupt 
you." 

"But  I  want  to  be  interrupted,"  he  protested — "once  every 
half-hour  at  least." 

"Well,  you  won't  be,"  she  said;  and  she  dropped  his 
hands,  and  began  to  push  him  gently  out  of  the  kitchen. 
They  had  agreed  that  it  was  better  to  have  breakfast  there. 

Jacob  allowed  himself  to  be  urged  towards  the  sitting- 
room,  but  he  insisted  that  he  must  be  allowed  to  light  the 
fire  before  he  settled  down. 

When  he  returned  from  the  outhouse  with  an  armful  of 
sticks,  he  found  Betty  in  an  apron  on  her  knees  at  the  grate. 

"I  don't  like  your  doing  that,"  he  said  on  a  note  of  re- 
monstrance. 

"Rubbish !"  replied  Betty.    "Someone  must  do  it." 

"Well,  why  shouldn't  I  ?"  he  asked. 

"You've  got  your  own  work,"  she  said ;  "and  I  must  find 
something  to  occupy  me." 

II 

The  significance  of  that  last  speech  of  hers  did  not  then 
engage  his  attention.  He  was  conscious  of  ability  this 


THE    COLLABORATORS  195 

morning.  The  pile  of  books  that  awaited  him  was  no  longer 
a  cause  for  dismay.  He  knew  that  he  could  deal  with  them, 
could  understand  and  criticise  them.  His  mind  was  alert, 
was  even  eager  for  material  to  work  upon. 

He  went  over  to  the  table  in  the  window,  on  which  he  had 
stacked  the  books  when  he  had  tidied  up  the  room,  and 
glanced  through  the  titles.  Three  or  four  he  had  read,  and 
he  decided  to  review  those  at  once.  If  he  were  to  work 
now,  he  must  have  material  that  would  absorb  his  energy; 
if  he  attempted  to  read,  his  mind  would  begin  to  construct, 
not  criticisms,  but  theories  of  its  own. 

He  brought  his  books,  paper,  ink,  and  pens  to  the  central 
table,  which  was  moderately  steady,  sat  down,  and  wrote 
the  title,  publisher,  and  price  of  the  most  important  volume 
at  the  head  of  a  sheet  of  foolscap,  glanced  through  the  notes 
he  had  made,  and  prepared  to  write  his  review.  He  knew 
precisely  what  he  wanted  to  say ;  his  only  difficulty  was  the 
opening  sentence. 

He  tried  over  half  a  dozen  in  his  mind,  and  began  one  or 
two  on  paper ;  but  he  was  particularly  fastidious  this  morn- 
ing, and  the  precise  attitude  he  wanted  to  express  would  not 
take  shape  in  a  phrase.  He  found  that  he  could  not  quite 
focus  his  thoughts  on  that  opening ;  they  had  such  wonder- 
ful, exciting  material  to  occupy  them.  He  lit  a  cigarette, 
and  allowed  himself  for  a  moment  to  dwell  on  the  ecstasy  of 
that  morning's  awakening.  .  .  . 

He  had  waked  early  and  had  lain  very  still,  while  his  mind 
had  sung  enchanted  songs  of  thankfulness.  He  was  no 
longer  alone.  She  was  there  beside  him — would  be  always 
there  with  him  in  future.  An  almost  unrealisable  bliss  had 
filled  him  at  the  thought  that  his  loneliness  was  ended  as 
only  Betty  had  the  power  to  end  it.  Without  her  he  must 
for  ever  remain  alone.  .  .  . 

The  joy  in  his  knowledge  of  her  near  presence  was  not  to 
be  borne  sitting  down,  and  he  got  up  and  began  to  pace  the 
room.  He  could  hear  her  moving  about  in  the  kitchen,  and 
once  or  twice  he  went  to  the  door  and  listened  to  that  most 


196  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

reassuring  sound.  Presently  he  heard  Millie  arrive,  and 
found  that  it  was  ten  o'clock. 

"It's  absurd  to  try  and  work  to-day,"  he  thought,  and 
then  wondered  what  Betty  would  say  when  he  had  to  con- 
fess that  he  had  done  nothing  all  the  morning.  He  re- 
turned to  the  table  and  stared  at  the  repulsive  blankness  of 
his  foolscap.  "I  can't  work,"  he  murmured;  and  again 
came  the  reflection  that,  although  he  might  cheat  his  own 
mentor,  he  could  not  deceive  Betty.  She  would  want  to 
know  what  he  had  done — perhaps  ask  him  to  read  his  re- 
views to  her.  And  it  was  not  only  to-day  that  this  would 
happen,  it  would  be  the  same  every  day.  He  had  his  happi- 
ness, but  he  was  no  longer  free.  He  could  not  procrastinate 
any  more ;  he  had  undertaken  a  great  responsibility,  and  he 
must  fulfil  it  by  the  discipline  of  steady  work.  He  could 
not  afford  to  dream  of  miraculous  fortune,  however  de- 
lightful the  process,  when,  as  now,  his  imagination  was  so 
vividly  constructive ;  he  must  face  the  tedium  of  concentra- 
tion, of  steadily  applied  mental  effort. 

And  he  must  begin  at  once. 

He  sat  down,  picked  up  the  book  he  had  chosen  for  his 
first  effort,  and  then,  glancing  in  the  direction  of  the  kitchen, 
he  said  in  a  low  voice :  "This  isn't  a  game  any  more,  Betty 
darling;  it's  toil,  hard  work,  repugnant  effort,  undertaken 
for  you.  I've  got  to  take  life  more  seriously."  He  had  in- 
tended to  begin  his  notice  with  an  epigram ;  instead  of  that 
he  began  with  the  name  of  the  author,  and  followed  it  with 
a  cliche.  .  .  . 

When  Betty  came  in  at  one  o'clock  to  tell  him  that  lunch 
was  ready  in  the  kitchen,  she  found  him  flushed  and  trium- 
phant. 

"That  isn't  bad  for  one  morning,  is  it?"  he  asked,  and 
displayed  half  a  dozen  sheets  of  well-covered  foolscap. 
"I've  done  three  books — fairly  decently,  too,  I  think.  At 
this  rate,  I  shall  soon  be  straight  again." 

"Splendid!"  she  said.  "I  do  want  you  to  .get  on  with 
your  book." 


THE    COLLABORATORS  197 

"Oh,  Betty  darling !  it's  all  so  easy  now  I've  got  you,"  he 
said.    "I  could  write  a  hundred  books." 

She  smiled  at  him — a  little  sadly,  he  thought. 


in 

The  afternoon  walk  was  spoilt  by  a  fine  drizzle  that  blew 
in  from  the  sea,  coming  in  ragged  clouds,  that  looked  first 
like  smoke,  and  then  like  mist,  and  wrapped  them  in  a  pass- 
ing haze  of  drifting  sleet,  so  that  the  air  was  suddenly  alive 
with  little  hurrying  drops  of  moisture  that  fled  by  them  and 
hastened  intently  up  the  valley.  The  black  bluff  of  Mawgan 
Forth  loomed  immense  and  melancholy  over  the  half-veiled 
darkness  of  the  calm  sea. 

"It  isn't  really  rain,"  Jacob  explained ;  "it's  cloud,  right 
down  on  the  earth."  He  found  a  symbol  in  it.  "I  am  in 
the  clouds  to-day,  dear,  in  any  case,"  he  said.  "Aren't 
you?" 

He  asked  the  question  with  some  anxiety  in  his  voice. 
She  had  been  very  quiet  as  they  walked  down  to  the  beach. 
He  had  taken  her  first  to  the  wall  letter-box,  at  her  request, 
and  she  had  posted  two  or  three  letters ;  but  as  she  had  vol- 
unteered no  information,  he  had  not  asked  her  any  ques- 
tions about  them.  He  was  wondering  now  if  these  letters 
had  been  a  sort  of  farewell  to  her  old  life,  and  if  she  were 
regretting  the  inevitableness  of  her  exile. 

Betty  looked  up  at  the  gloomy  mass  of  the  cliff-head,  and 
shivered.  "It's  rather  lonely,"  she  said. 

He  drew  her  hand  through  his  arm  and  pressed  his  shoul- 
der against  her.  "It  isn't,"  he  returned  defiantly.  "We  can 
never  be  lonely  again  while  we've  got  each  other." 

She  did  not  answer  that ;  she  stood  frowning,  staring  out 
into  the  grey  mist.  "And  it's  so  sad,"  she  said,  after  a 
pause. 

"Wait  till  you  see  it  all  in  sunshine,"  replied  Jacob.  "I'll 
admit  it  is  a  bit  gloomy  this  afternoon,  but  it's  very  beauti- 
ful ;  don't  you  think  so — big  and  splendid  and  grand  ?" 

"Oh  yes,"  agreed  Betty,  without  enthusiasm. 


198  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

"It  has  its  moods,  you  know,"  Jacob  continued.  "Real 
expressions  of  its  own,  and  not  just  the  things  one  puts  into 
it.  This  afternoon,  for  instance,  I'm  just  as  full  of  happi- 
ness as  I  can  be,  but  the  sea  and  the  cliffs  and  the  valley 
don't  reflect  my  feeling." 

"They  do  mine,"  murmured  Betty,  without  thought. 

"Oh,  Betty  darling!"  He  was  checked  and  frightened. 
"Do  you  really  mind  so  much  about  the  silly  little  world 
outside  ?" 

She  shook  her  head. 

"What,  then  ?"  he  asked ;  and  as  she  still  made  no  answer, 
he  began  to  plead  with  her.  "Oh,  tell  me — you  must  tell 
me !"  he  argued.  "You  mustn't  hide  yourself  from  me.  Is 
it  my  fault  ?  At  least  tell  me  that.  Are  you  disappointed  in 
me?  Is  it  that  you  don't  care  for  me?" 

"No,  not  that,"  she  said ;  and  before  he  could  question 
her  again  she  went  on:  "Leave  me  alone,  dear.  I'm  all 
right.  It  hasn't  anything  to  do  with  you,  and  I  shall  soon 
get  over  it.  But  let's  go  in  now ;  I  can't  bear  the  depression 
of  those  awful  cliffs,  and  the  sea,  and  everything.  Let's  get 
back  to  a  cheerful  fire." 

They  hardly  spoke  as  they  made  their  way  back  up  the 
long  hill.  Jacob  was  a  little  disappointed.  He  had  wanted 
her  so  much  to  share  his  delight  in  the  sombre  beauty  of 
Mawgan  Forth.  And  something  of  her  depression  had  been 
communicated  to  him.  Surely  she  would  not  always  feel 
like  this  about  her  coming? 

And  when  they  were  back  again  in  the  house,  and  sitting 
over  their  tea  in  the  front  room  before  a  bright  and  well- 
behaved  fire,  she  tried  to  deceive  him  by  a  display  of  cheer- 
fulness. 

"Now  you're  going  to  read  the  book  to  me,"  she  an- 
nounced. 

He  went  and  knelt  at  her  feet. 

"I'll  do  anything  in  the  world  to  make  you  happy,"  he 
said. 

She  put  her  hand  on  his  hair  and  looked  down  at  him. 
"I'm  quite  happy,"  she  said. 


THE    COLLABORATORS  199 

"Quite?"  he  asked. 

She  nodded ;  and  if  he  was  hardly  convinced,  he  thought 
it  better  not  to  press  her  then  for  any  further  reassurances. 
"She'll  be  all  right  in  a  day  or  two,"  he  persuaded  himself. 
"It  is  a  tremendous  thing  for  her  to  have  done,  I  suppose." 


IV 

The  reading  of  his  novel  was  a  great  success.  He  read 
steadily  on  until  seven  o'clock,  with  only  one  distraction 
caused  by  the  arrival  of  Millie,  and  then  he  helped  Betty  to 
lay  their  supper,  and  to  make  cocoa,  and  boil  eggs  on  the 
sitting-room  fire.  Betty  gave  him  all  the  praise  and  en- 
couragement he  had  sighed  for.  His  novel  had  appealed  to 
her.  She  had  found  the  stuff  of  reality  in  it. 

"It's  all  so  true  and  so  alive,"  she  said,  as  they  had  sup- 
per. "I  haven't  read  many  novels — I  never  seem  to  have 
had  time — but  all  those  I  have  read  were  always  full  of 
things  that  never  could  have  happened.  Yours  is  like  life." 

"Well,  it  is  life  in  a  way,  isn't  it?"  Jacob  said.  "I  mean 
that,  although  I  have  mixed  it  all  up,  and  John  Tristram's 
adventures  didn't  actually  happen  to  me  like  that,  I  have 
only  written  of  the  things  I  really  know  something  about. 
There  isn't  much  imagination  in  it  all." 

"It's  wonderfully  real,"  she  said,  and  then  asked :  "Didn't 
those  things  happen  to  you?" 

"Oh,  in  a  way."  Jacob  had  treated  that  first  love-affair 
of  his,  and  was  not  very  anxious  that  Betty  should  believe 
his  version  to  be  a  detailed  record  of  fact.  In  some  way 
the  romance  of  it  had  faded  in  the  telling.  He  had  found  it 
difficult  to  recover  the  early  rapture  of  his  admiration  for 
Madeline,  and  Tristram's  liaison  appeared  less  defensible 
than  his  own  had  seemed  at  the  time. 

"In  a  way,"  he  repeated.  "Not  quite  like  that,  you  know. 
I've  put  a  part  of  my  experience  into  a  different  setting." 

"But  Tristram  is  you,"  Betty  said. 

He  denied  that.  "He's  only  a  part  of  me,"  he  explained. 
"The  most  consistent  part,  I  think.  If  I  had  only  had 


200  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

Tristram's  qualities,  I  might  have  made  a  success  of  things." 

"Well,  he's  awfully  like  you,"  Betty  persisted. 

"Is  he?  I  suppose  he  is,"  Jacob  said.  "And  yet  I  don't 
picture  myself  when  I'm  writing  about  him.  I  can  see  him 
quite  clearly  in  my  mind,  and  facially  he  isn't  like  me.  He's 
more  hatchet-faced  than  I  am,  and  he  has  got  straighter 
hair,  and  his  nose  is  rather  longer  and  more  aquiline." 

"Yours  isn't  aquiline  at  all,"  remarked  Betty;  "it's  per- 
fectly straight." 

"Yes,  you'd  never  think  I  had  any  Jew  in  me,  would 
you?"  he  asked. 

"I  certainly  shouldn't,"  she  said. 

"I  suppose  I  take  after  my  mother,"  he  returned,  "as  I 
do  in  other  things.  Aunt  Hester  used  to  tell  me  that  she 
was  always  putting  off  her  work,  and  expecting  a  miracle  to 
happen  that  would  make  it  all  right  for  her." 

"But  you're  not  like  that,"  Betty  said. 

"I-  am,"  he  told  her.  "That's  why  I've  made  such  a  mess 
of  everything." 

"Well,  you  aren't  going  to  make  a  mess  of  this  book," 
Betty  assured  him,  and  he  was  willing  to  believe  her. 

They  went  back  to  their  reading  when  the  supper  had 
been  cleared  away,  and  Jacob  read  on  until  ten  o'clock.  By 
that  time  he  was  not  more  than  half  through  his  pile  of 
manuscript. 

"I  can't  go  on  any  more;  my  voice  is  giving  way,"  he 
remarked,  as  he  put  the  book  down ;  "but  there's  a  heap  left 
still." 

"I  wish  there  were  twenty  times  as  much,"  Betty  said. 

"Oh,  I  can't  tell  you  what  a  difference  it  makes  to  me 
having  you,"  Jacob  broke  out — "all  that  it  means  having 
your  encouragement.  And  you  do  like  it,  darling;  I  know 
you  do  by  the  way  you  say  it." 

He  was  kneeling  beside  her  again,  and  he  laid  his  head  on 
her  shoulder.  "This  is  my  success,"  he  said ;  "I  don't  want 
anything  more  than  this." 

All  her  heart  went  out  to  him  at  that  moment.  He  had 
taken  her  away  from  herself,  helped  her  to  forget  for  a 


THE    COLLABORATORS  201 

time  the  indefinable  reproach  and  fear  that  had  darkened 
her  outlook  for  the  past  twenty-four  hours.  She  was  warm 
with  the  thought  that  he  was  worth  any  sacrifice  she  might 
make. 

"I  think  you're  a  genius,  dear,"  she  said,  putting  her  face 
down  to  his. 

He  denied  it  blissfully.  .  .  . 

"And  we  are  going  to  be  unspeakably  happy  down  here, 
aren't  we?"  he  asked  presently.  "I  can  do  anything,  write 
anything,  beloved,  if  I  have  you,  and  you're  happy." 

She  had  no  doubt  at  all  that  night. 


The  next  day  was  Sunday — a  festival,  as  Jacob  pointed 
out,  differentiated  only  by  the  fact  that  if  you  wanted  your 
post  you  must  walk  to  Mawgan  and  fetch  it  for  yourself. 

Betty  discovered  no  eagerness  for  letters,  nor  did  she 
suggest  that  they  should  go  to  church.  Jacob  had  wondered 
if  she  might  show  any  inclination  towards  a  more  rigid 
piety  as  some  sort  of  compensation  for  the  disregard  of  a 
certain  precept  they  had  broken. 

He  said  nothing  to  her  before  their  mid-day  dinner — he 
worked  with  great  steadfastness  all  the  morning — but  as 
they  were  preparing  to  go  out  afterwards,  he  asked  her  if 
she  would  care  to  walk  over  to  St.  Eval  for  three  o'clock 
evensong. 

"Have  you  ever  been?"  she  asked. 

"No,  of  course  not,"  he  said ;  "but,  then,  I  don't  believe 
in  the  Christian  dogma." 

"I  don't  know  that  I  do  either,"  was  Betty's  astonishing 
answer ;  and  then,  as  he  was  evidently  about  to  express  his 
delight  in  her  unexpected  admission,  she  cut  him  short  by 
saying:  "But  I  don't  want  to  discuss  it,  please,  dear,  nor 
.  .  .  nor  anything  ...  of  that  sort.  I  want  to  forget  all 
about  it,  and  if  you  really  want  to  see  me  happy,  you'll  leave 
that  subject  alone.  And  I  am  happy  to-day,"  she  added. 

He  had  a  feeling  that  this  attempt  to  suppress  and  bury 


202  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

her  qualms — she  must  have  them  still ;  she  had  admitted  that 
in  what  she  had  said — was  unwise,  was  little  likely  to  lead  to 
any  real  peace  of  mind  for  her.  But  he  had  not  the  de- 
termination to  face  the  trouble  just  then.  She  had  said  she 
was  happy,  and  she  appeared  to  be ;  he  would  wait  until  her 
malady  had  manifested  itself  before  he  attempted  to  cure  it. 
And  his  intuition  might  be  quite  false.  It  might,  after  all, 
be  better  for  her  to  forget,  if  she  could. 

"Good !"  he  said  happily.  "We'll  go  and  explore  Water- 
gate ;  it's  more  cheerful  than  Mawgan  Forth." 

They  finished  his  book  that  evening. 

"Oh,  do  get  on  with  your  old  reviewing,  and  write  some 
more,"  was  the  essence  of  Betty's  criticism;  and  she  began 
to  ply  him  with  questions  as  to  the  further  development  of 
John  Tristram's  career. 

They  talked  until  half-past  eleven,  and  Jacob  felt  sure  that 
his  intuition  had  been  at  fault.  In  six  months'  time,  he 
thought,  we  shall  be  able  to  discuss  that  question  of  con- 
science without  a  tremor;  it's  all  too  fresh  now.  .  .  . 

He  heard  her  hurry  out  to  the  front-door  when  the  post 
arrived  the  next  morning,  and  after  a  moment's  interval  she 
came  into  the  sitting-room. 

"Anything  ?"  he  asked. 

"Two  papers  and  a  letter  for  you,"  she  said,  and  put  them 
down  before  him. 

"Only  proofs,"  he  commented ;  "some  stuff  I  sent  in  just 
before  you  came.  Was  there  anything  for  you  ?" 

"I  didn't  expect  anything,"  she  said,  "except,  perhaps,  a 
letter  from  Freda." 

"You  wouldn't  get  that  till  to-morrow,"  Jacob  said.  "No 
post  out  from  London  till  midnight,  you  know." 

"You  wouldn't  get  country  letters,  then,  either?"  she 
asked. 

"I  don't  expect  so,"  he  said;  "not  letters  written  yester- 
day." 

She  sighed  with  a  touch  of  impatience,  and  he  got  up  and 
went  over  to  her. 

"What  was  that  sigh  for  ?"  he  said. 


THE    COLLABORATORS  203 

"Nothing,"  she  told  him.  "Are  you  still  reviewing? 
When  are  you  going  on  with  your  book  ?" 

"In  a  couple  of  days,"  he  said.  "I  shall  sit  down  to  it 
with  an  easy  mind  when  I've  got  this  stuff  off." 

"Well,  hurry  up,"  she  returned.  "You  can  work  after 
tea  to-night;  there's  nothing  more  to  read." 

"And  what  will  you  do?" 

"Oh,  I'll  find  something  to  do,"  she  assured  him. 

He  wondered,  when  she  had  gone,  whether  she  had 
enough  to  occupy  her,  and  remembered  the  admission  she 
had  made  on  that  first  morning  when  she  had  been  doing 
the  hearth.  What  was  there  to  distract  her  mind  down 
here  from  brooding  on  that  problem  of  hers?  Was  she, 
perhaps,  engaged  in  a  perpetual  struggle  to  thrust  it  down 
out  of  her  consciousness? 

"I  must  find  something  else  to  read  aloud,"  he  thought; 
but  after  tea  she  insisted  that  he  should  go  on  with  his  work. 
He  succeeded  in  doing  a  little  while  she  was  out  of  the 
room. 

After  supper  he  read  two  chapters  of  a  new  novel  he  had 
for  review,  and  then  she  confessed  that  it  did  not  interest 
her.  Afterwards  they  talked  for  a  time,  but  Jacob  found 
that  ordinary  conversation  was  beset  with  pitfalls.  The 
forbidden  subjects  were  lurking  behind  the  most  improb- 
able cdrners. 

"I  wish  we  could  be  open  about  these  things,"  he  said  at 
last,  when  the  topic  of  the  Laurences  had  left  him  facing 
another  blank  wall. 

"Not  yet,"  pleaded  Betty.  "In  a  little  while  I  will,  per- 
haps." 

And  again  he  wondered  if  he  ought  to  insist.  He  had  a 
queer  picture  in  his  mind  of  all  those  inhibited  thoughts 
being  thrust  down  and  growing  malignantly  under  the  sur- 
face. .  .  . 

VI 

Tuesday's  post  always  brought  him  his  weekly  tale  of 
books  from  the  office,  but  he  had  sent  in  no  list  to  the  editor 


204  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

on  the  previous  Saturday,  and  was  divided  between  anxiety 
lest  there  should  be  no  books  at  all  and  a  fear  that  there 
might  be  too  many.  He  jumped  to  his  feet  when  he  heard 
the  postman  knock,  but  Betty  was  before  him.  He  heard 
her  footsteps  in  the  passage,  and  waited  for  her  to  come  in, 
but  she  returned  to  the  kitchen,  stayed  there  a  moment,  and 
then  ran  upstairs. 

He  found  two  parcels  of  books  on  the  kitchen  table.  His 
anxiety  was  relieved ;  there  were  too  many.  And  although 
he  sighed  in  anticipation  of  the  new  burden  they  would 
impose,  he  was  pleased  by  this  evidence  that  the  editor  had 
not  forgotten  him.  Moreover,  an  investigation  of  the  par- 
cels revealed  the  fact  that  two  of  the  volumes  were  of  some 
importance,  that  reviews  of  them  would  be  required  by  the 
day  of  publication  a  week  hence,  and  that  "space"  could 
be  given  to  them.  Jacob  was  flattered.  He  felt  that  he  was 
still  in  touch  with  the  world  of  letters,  and  that  his  criticisms 
were  of  some  account  in  that  world.  Meredith  had  said 
that  since  Gresswell  had  been  editing  the  Daily  Post  the 
literary  side  of  the  paper  had  improved  enormously. 

The  statement  had  intimidated  Jacob  at  the  time,  had 
made  him  nervous  and  over-anxious;  but  this  morning  he 
felt  equal  to  any  demand  that  might  be  made  on  his  critical 
powers.  He  wanted  immediately  to  go  and  tell  Betty. 

He  looked  at  his  watch,  and  found  that  it  was  not  yet 
twelve,  and  then  deliberately  sat  down  to  finish  the  work 
he  had  been  doing  before  the  interruption.  "Discipline," 
he  said  to  himself  curtly. 

He  disciplined  himself  so  well  that  it  was  a  quarter  past 
one  before  he  permitted  himself  to  reflect  that  Betty  was 
very  long  in  coming. 

He  found  the  kitchen  empty,  and  no  sign  of  any  prepara- 
tion for  a  meal.  "Had  she  been  upstairs  since  half-past 
eleven?"  he  wondered.  He  listened  attentively,  but  could 
hear  no  sounds  overhead.  The  doors  of  that  house  were 
ill-fitting,  but  the  floors  were  solid  enough. 

He  went  back  to  the  sitting-room,  and  stood  irresolutely 
by  the  table.  What  could  she  have  been  doing  all  that  time  ? 


THE    COLLABORATORS  205 

It  was  so  unlike  her  to  neglect  the  housework.  He  was 
afraid  to  go  upstairs. 

When  he  went  at  last,  he  went  noisily  to  warn  her  of 
his  coming. 

He  found  her  standing  by  the  window  with  her  back  to 
the  room. 

"Hal — lo!"  he  said,  "do  you  know  what  the  time  is?" 

"I'm  afraid  I'm  rather  late,"  she  said,  without  turning 
her  head.  "I'll  be  down  in  a  minute." 

"Is  anything  the  matter,  dear?"  he  asked.  He  was  still 
standing  by  the  door.  Something  in  her  attitude  told  him 
that  she  wished  to  be  left  alone. 

"No,  nothing's  the  matter,"  she  said.  "You  might  put 
the  potatoes  on;  they're  all  ready.  I'm  coming  in  a  few 
minutes." 

"All  right ;  don't  be  long,"  he  replied,  with  an  assumption 
of  cheerfulness  as  he  went  out. 

She  was  worrying  herself,  he  reflected,  as  he  made  up 
the  kitchen  fire  with  wood  from  the  outhouse.  They  must 
have  this  out  between  them,  talk  everything  over  quietly 
and  reasonably.  It  was  absurd  for  her  to  nurse  this  scruple 
of  conscience.  The  thing  was  done  now,  and  they  must 
face  the  consequences  bravely.  And  there  would  not  be 
any  consequences.  Who  had  a  right  to  criticise  them? 
Certainly  no  one  here  in  Trevarrian.  No  one  knew;  and 
if  they  did  know,  they  wouldn't  care.  He  worked  himself 
up  into  quite  a  fervour  of  conviction  for  the  righteousness 
of  their  cause. 

But  when  Betty  came  down  she  made  no  further  reference 
to  her  neglect  of  duty,  and  he  could  not  be  quite  certain 
whether  or  not  she  had  been  crying. 

They  were  very  quiet  over  their  postponed  dinner.  Jacob 
was  still  revolving  his  defence,  going  back  into  history 
for  precedents;  and  Betty  evidently  did  not  wish  to  talk. 
And  afterwards  she  seemed  quite  composed  and  cheerful 
again,  and  he  thought  that,  perhaps,  she  had  faced  the  prob- 
lem herself  that  morning  and  conquered  her  weakness.  He 


206  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

decided  that  it  would  be  better  to  say  nothing  more  just 
then. 

She  received  his  news  with  regard  to  Mr.  Gresswell's  im- 
plied compliment  on  his  reviewer's  ability  as  a  matter  of 
course. 

"It  has  bucked  me  up,  rather,  all  the  same,"  Jacob  as- 
serted, eager  for  her  to  share  his  elation. 

"You  are  too  modest  about  your  work,"  Betty  said,  and 
added :  "I  suppose  this  means  that  you  won't  get  on  with 
your  book  this  week?" 

"I  think  I  can  put  in  a  couple  of  days  on  it,"  Jacob  said. 

But  even  that  promise  seemed  to  give  her  no  real  pleasure. 

She  did  not  come  into  the  sitting-room  between  tea  and 
supper ;  and  Jacob's  attention  was  not  very  successfully  con- 
centrated on  the  reading  of  one  of  those  two  important 
books. 

He  was  anxious  about  her.  "If  only  she  could  be  happy 
here,"  he  thought  again  and  again,  "it  would  all  be  so  abso- 
lutely splendid.  I  could  work  now." 

She  had  said  nothing  about  having  received  any  letters 
that  morning. 

VII 

In  the  night  he  woke  with  a  feeling  of  uneasiness.  Some- 
thing had  recalled  him  to  consciousness,  some  sound  that 
he  had  recognised  in  sleep,  and  had  instantly  forgotten  on 
waking.  He  lay  very  still,  staring  into  the  darkness  of 
the  room,  listening. 

For  a  moment  he  heard  nothing,  and  then  he  realised  that 
Betty  was  whistling  under  her  breath,  a  tiny,  sibilant  whistle 
that  shaped  itself  into  the  ghost  of  a  tune. 

He  did  not  speak  at  once,  and,  called  out  of  a  deep 
sleep,  he  was  vaguely  annoyed  at  being  disturbed.  That 
faint,  whispered  tune  was  curiously  irritating. 

"What  is  it,  dear?  Can't  you  sleep?"  he  asked  gently. 
He  had  not  moved  nor  made  any  sound  since  he  woke,  but 
it  seemed  to  him  that  Betty  must  know  he  had  been  listen- 
ing to  her. 


THE    COLLABORATORS  207 

The  ghostly  whistle  stopped  instantly,  almost  disconcert- 
ingly, but  she  did  not  answer  his  question. 

"What  is  it,  Betty,  dear?"  he  asked  again;  and  then,  as 
she  still  made  no  reply,  he  raised  himself  on  his  elbow 
and  tried  to  distinguish  her  face  in  the  darkness.  "Can't 
you  sleep?"  he  repeated. 

"It's  nothing.  I'm  all  right,"  she  said  in  a  low  voice  that 
shook  a  little,  as  if  it  were  hardly  under  her  control. 

"Betty!     You're  not  crying,"  he  said. 

"Do  leave  me  alone.  I'm  quite  all  right,"  she  returned, 
more  steadily. 

"But  you're  not!"  he  exclaimed.  "Oh!  we  can't  go  on 
like  this.  I  can't  bear  to  think  of  you  lying  awake  and 
miserable.  Betty,  do  speak  to  me!  Do  tell  me  what's  the 
matter." 

He  sat  up  and  felt  for  the  matches  on  the  table  by  the 
bed.  But  when  he  had  lighted  the  candle,  he  still  could 
not  see  her  face;  her  back  was  towards  him,  and  her  face 
was  pressed  into  the  pillow. 

He  put  his  hand  on  her  shoulder  and  tried  to  draw  her 
to  him.  She  resisted  him  with  a  touch  of  petulance. 

"Why  can't  you  leave  me  alone?"  she  said.  There  could 
be  no  doubt  now  that  she  was  crying. 

How  long  had  she  been  crying,  he  wondered?  For  how 
long  had  she  lain  trying  to  keep  back  her  tears  by  repeat- 
ing that  distressing  little  whistle?  Surely  she  had  allowed 
him  to  gauge  at  last  the  depths  of  her  misery.  All  the  old 
doubts  and  fears  had  returned.  He  had  foreseen  many  re- 
sponsibilities, and  had  been  willing  to  take  them  upon  him- 
self, but  how  could  he  deal  with  this  ultimate  unhappiness? 

"You  must  confide  in  me,"  he  said  suddenly,  continuing 
his  own  line  of  thought.  "It's  this  suppression  that  is 
making  you  miserable.  If  we  could  share  it  all;  if  you 
would  only  talk  to  me  about  it.  .  .  ." 

She  did  not  answer  him,  but  he  found  speech  a  relief. 
"It's  the  end  of  everything,"  he  went  on.  "If  you  have 
found  out  that  you  don't  love  me,  you  must  tell  me  so.  I 
won't  threaten  you.  I'll  go  on  living  somehow,  but  I  can't 


208  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

bear  this.  I  simply  can't  bear  it — the  uncertainty  of  it 
...  to  be  in  heaven  one  minute,  and  then  to  find  out  that 
you  have  only  been  pretending  to  care." 

"It  isn't  that!  it  isn't  that!"  she  put  in. 

"Oh!  then  tell  me  what  it  is,"  he  besought  her. 

She  sat  up  in  the  bed  beside  him.  She  had  recovered 
her  self-control,  and  although  her  face  was  still  wet  with 
tears,  her  voice  was  steady  again. 

"Why  can't  you  go  to  sleep  and  leave  me  alone?"  she 
asked.  "I  shall  be  all  right  if  you'll  only  give  me  a  little 
time." 

"You  won't!"  he  returned  obstinately.  "You'll  never  be 
all  right  while  you  keep  things  to  yourself  like  this." 

"I  didn't  think  you'd  hear  me,"  she  said. 

"I  heard  you  in  my  sleep,"  he  protested.  "You  can't 
keep  things  from  me  like  that.  I  feel  your  unhappiness." 
He  paused,  trying  to  remember  the  quotation  that  had  in- 
evitably suggested  itself  as  the  climax  of  his  expression  of 
devotion.  "  'My  heart  would  hear  you  and  beat  if  I'd  lain 
for  a  century  dead/  "  he  concluded. 

"Couldn't  we  both  die  together?"  she  said. 

He  was  suddenly,  terribly  shaken.  Not  till  then  had  he 
faced  the  reality  of  her  trouble.  That  single  expression 
of  feeling  revealed  awful  deeps  of  anguish.  She  had  spoken 
so  quietly  and  earnestly.  It  was  as  if  she  had  found  words 
for  a  vital  desire  that  she  had  long  been  hiding  from  him. 

"Betty,  you  don't  mean  that !"  he  said  harshly.  He  could 
not  bear  to  lie  still  any  longer,  and  he  got  out  of  bed  and 
put  on  his  dressing-gown.  For  a  minute  he  walked  up  and 
down  the  room;  then  he  came  and  sat  by  her  on  the  bed. 

She  looked  so  young,  so  girlish  with  her  hair  hanging 
down  in  a  great  plait ;  and  the  expression  of  her  face,  how- 
ever sad  and  determined,  was  also  young,  almost  childish. 

"Oh,  my  dear,  you  don't  mean  that !"  he  repeated. 

She  put  out  her  arms  to  him,  drew  him  to  her,  and  leaned 
her  head  on  his  shoulder. 

"I  don't  know,  I  don't  know,"  she  said.  "It  would  be 
the  end  of  everything." 


THE    COLLABORATORS  209 

"You  want  me  to  die  too,"  he  said.  He  had  a  faint  hope 
that  the  thought  of  that  might  in  some  way  break  through 
this  strange,  inexplicable  mood  of  hers. 

"I  couldn't  leave  you  alone,"  she  said. 

He  shuddered,  and  held  her  desperately.  There  was  no 
need  for  the  pitiful  "No,  no,  no"  he  despairingly  repeated 
to  prove  that  he  could  never  again  face  life  without  her. 

They  lost  all  restraint  then.  They  were  so  utterly  alone 
together,  there  in  the  stillness  of  the  night,  so  separated 
from  all  humanity,  so  free  from  any  need  for  the  least 
reserve.  They  were  like  two  little  children  who  had  wan- 
dered out  into  the  unknown  and  were  faced  with  the  dread 
of  coming  night.  And  they  clung  to  each  other  as  though 
only  so  could  they  find  refuge  from  the  terror  that  was 
so  near  them.  .  .  . 

VIII 

But  in  the  morning  all  that  outpouring  and  revelation, 
their  natural  and  direct  expression  of  emotion,  wore  an 
air  of  being  something  dramatic  and  overstrained.  When 
they  had  put  on  those  garments  of  everyday  civilisation 
that  ranged  them  with  the  rest  of  their  kind  they  had 
put  on  also  some  invisible  cloak  of  restraint  that  hid  them 
from  each  other.  They  looked  at  one  another  shyly,  as  if 
they  were  aware  of  a  secret  that  must  for  ever  be  hidden 
from  the  world.  Betty,  at  least,  had  revealed  a  wish  of 
which  she  was  now  ashamed. 

And  her  constraint  was  greater  than  Jacob's.  He  had 
confessed  what  he  regarded  as  the  unmanly  weakness  of  un- 
restrained tears,  but  in  a  sense  he  had  been  the  victor.  By 
his  very  weakness,  he  thought,  he  had  convinced  her  that 
she  could  never  leave  him. 

He  made  no  reference  to  their  night's  emotion  at  break- 
fast, but  when  he  was  alone  in  the  sitting-room,  faced  by 
his  morning's  work,  he  knew  that  no  work  was  possible 
for  him  until  he  and  she  had  come  to  a  clearer  under- 
standing. 

He  found  her  upstairs  making  the  bed. 


210  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

"How  long  shall  you  be  over  that?"  he  asked. 

She  looked  up  as  if  he  had  threatened  her.  "Why? 
What  do  you  want?"  she  said. 

Her  apparent  timidity  gave  him  courage.  She  had  said 
that  he  always  ended  by  commanding  her,  and  he  felt  able 
to  command  her  now. 

"We  must  talk  about  all  this,"  he  said  firmly;  and  the 
memory  of  his  own  tears  stiffened  him  yet  more  in  his  reso- 
lution. "I  can't  possibly  work  until  we've  had  it  all  out, 
and  the  sooner  the  better." 

Betty  sat  down  on  the  bed.  "It  can't  do  any  good,"  she 
persisted  feebly. 

"I  suppose  your  people  have  been  writing  to  you  ?"  Jacob 
ventured. 

"Why  do  you  think  so?"  Her  defences,  she  knew,  were 
becoming  very  weak. 

"Not  a  difficult  inference  to  draw,"  he  returned.  "Nat- 
urally they  would.  And  I  suppose  from  their  point  of 
view  .  .  ." 

She  interrupted  him.  "It  isn't  that  that  matters,"  she 
said. 

"What,  then?" 

"You  wouldn't  understand.  You  would  only  argue  with 
me,  as  you  have  so  often  before,  and  you  can't  put  your- 
self in  my  place." 

"Oh,  but  that  isn't  true !"  he  broke  out.  "I  can— I  can 
so  easily.  But  why  should  I?  The  thing's  done  now — 
done  for  all  time.  Let's  face  it.  Why  should  I  make  my- 
self wretched  by  deliberately  trying  to  take  your  old  point 
of  view,  and  encouraging  you  to  exaggerate  all  those 
scruples  that  you  ought  to  face  and — and  get  rid  of  ?  Why 
shouldn't  you  make  a  big  effort  and  try  to  look  at  every- 
thing from  the  common-sense  point  of  view?  .  .  ." 

He  was  going  on,  but  she  stopped  him  by  getting  up 
and  opening  her  trunk.  "I  suppose  you  had  better  see 
those  letters,"  she  said,  "and  then,  perhaps,  you'll  be  able 
to  understand." 


N 


THE    COLLABORATORS  211 

"I'll  try,"  he  returned  resolutely,  quite  undaunted  as 
yet. 

She  lifted  the  tray  of  the  box  and  thrust  her  arm  down 
under  a  pile  of  clothes.  "I  began  to  pack  yesterday  morn- 
ing," she  remarked. 

"Began  to  pack?"  Jacob  repeated  in  wonder.  He  was 
more  than  ever  anxious  now  to  explore  all  this  drama  that 
Betty  had  been  playing  unknown  to  him. 

"I  meant  to  go  away,"  she  said,  and  stood  up,  holding 
two  envelopes  in  her  hand.  "I  never  meant  to  show  you 
these,"  she  went  on.  "But  you'd  better  read  them  now. 
One  is  from  my  father  to  you,  with  just  a  note  inside  for 
me;  and  the  other  is  from  my  Aunt  Mary.  Will  you  go 
downstairs  and  read  them?  I'll  come  to  you  in  a  few  min- 
utes." 

She  looked  at  him  with  a  hard  defiance,  as  if  the  mere 
touch  of  those  letters  had  evoked  some  feeling  of  enmity 
towards  him,  or  it  may  have  been  that  she  challenged  his 
criticism  of  those  opinions  that  he  was  about  to  pass  judg- 
ment upon. 

"I  suppose  you  think  I'm  being  rather  brutal,"  he  said; 
"but  I  must  be,  for  both  our  sakes." 

"We  can  talk  about  that  when  you've  read  the  letters," 
she  returned. 

"Will  that  make  such  a  difference?"  he  asked. 

"It  may  not  make  much  difference  to  you,"  she  said. 

"To  you,  then?" 

"Well,  I  hope  you'll  remember  that  my  aunt  is  a  very 
dear  woman,  and  that  I'm  very,  very  fond  of  her,"  Betty 
said;  and  Jacob  had  a  sight  of  the  attitude  she  expected 
him  to  take.  This  logical  firmness  and  resolution  of  his 
was  already  involving  certain  penalties. 

"I  will  try  to  understand  your  position,  dear,"  he  said, 
with  the  first  sign  of  relenting. 

She  softened  instantly.  "It's  so  different  for  me,"  she 
urged. 

"I  know  it  is,"  he  returned.  "But  we  must  face  it  and 
talk  it  out  together,  mustn't  we?" 


THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

"Perhaps  it's  better,"  she  admitted.  But  as  he  was  leav- 
ing the  room  she  changed  her  mind  in  one  particular,  and 
called  to  him. 

He  turned  and  looked  at  her. 

"Don't  read  father's  .letter,"  she  said.  "Give  it  back  to 
me." 

"I  suppose  he  hasn't  been  very  polite,"  Jacob  suggested. 

"Oh,  well,  what  could  you  expect?"  she  asked.  "Any- 
how, I'd  sooner  you  didn't  read  it." 

"I'm  going  to  read  them  all,"  Jacob  said  firmly.  "You 
don't  quite  do  me  justice.  You  think  I'm  prejudiced — that 
I  can  only  see  one  point  of  view ;  you  think  I  shall  be  in- 
sulted and  abusive  and  bigoted,  don't  you  now?" 

"It  must  be  so  difficult  for  you  .  .  ."  she  began;  but  he 
interrupted  her  by  saying: 

"Oh,  my  dear  little  Betty,  can't  you  remember  that  I  was 
brought  up  in  that  atmosphere,  that  I  was  educated  by  a 
parson,  and  that  I  know  precisely  what  parsons  think  and 
write  about  people  like  myself  ?  Trust  me,  dear.  Besides,"1 
he  added,  "we're  going  to  understand  one  another  to-day, 
and  it's  just  as  well  that  I  should  have  my  lesson  as  well 
as  you.  We've  got  to  find  some  middle  ground  for  agree- 
ment." 

There  was  no  sign  of  conviction  in  her  expression,  but 
sne  allowed  him  to  go. 

IX 

That  short  exposition  of  Jacob's,  the  statement  of  his 
willingness  to  find  some  middle  ground,  saved  him  from 
the  mistake  he  would  inevitably  have  made  if  his  mind  had 
not  been  cleared  by  definite  and,  as  he  believed,  illuminat- 
ing speech.  Nevertheless,  he  was  glad  that  Betty  was  not 
in  the  room  when  he  read  her  father's  letter. 

Mr.  Gale  had  written  in  the  heat  of  the  moment,  without 
tact  or  consideration,  an  exhortation  that  might  have  driven 
to  defiance  a  more  pliable  man  than  Jacob. 

"Sir,"  the  letter  began,  "I  have  heard  from  my  daughter 
that,  absolutely  incredible  as  it  appears  to  me,  she  has  al- 


THE    COLLABORATORS  213 

lowed  herself  to  be  deceived  into  accompanying  you  to 
Cornwall.  What  compulsion  you  have  put  upon  her  I  have 
no  idea,  but  knowing  as  I  do  my  daughter's  great,  if  not 
too  discriminating,  gift  of  sympathy,  I  conclude  that  you 
must  in  some  way  have  played  upon  her  tenderer  feelings. 
I  infer  from  your  name  that  you  are  not  a  Christian,  but 
I  trust  that  your  sense  of  what  is  right  and  honourable  is 
not  so  perverted  but  that  you  will  be  able  to  see  that  the 
only  course  now  open  to  you  is  that  of  at  once  surrender- 
ing all  claim  to  my  daughter's  affection,  and  permitting  her 
to  return  home  immediately  upon  receipt  of  this  letter. 
If,  however,  you  still  persist  in  restraining  her,  if  not  against 
her  will,  most  certainly  against  all  the  dictates  of  her  con- 
science and  her  sense  of  what  she  owes  to  her  family,  I 
shall  be  compelled  to  take  steps  towards  recalling  her  to  a 
proper  state  of  mind.  I  cannot  but  feel,  however,  that 
you  will  repent  your  outrage  upon  morals  and  all  decency 
when  you  come  to  consider  the  dastardly  aspect  your  con- 
duct must  wear  in  the  eyes  of  all  right-minded  people." 
He  had  subscribed  himself,  without  any  conventional  for- 
mula, "Charles  Owen  Gale." 

Never  before  had  Jacob  suffered  such  a  feeling  of  furious 
impotence.  For  a  few  moments  he  was  dominated  by  a 
passion  to  take  the  Rev.  Charles  Owen  Gale  by  the  throat 
and  strangle  him.  That  was  the  only  method  of  revenging 
himself.  No  argument,  no  true  presentation  of  facts,  could 
ever  touch  the  awful,  complacent  superiority  of  the  man 
who  had  written  that  letter.  Betty's  father  was  as  sure 
of  his  own  righteousness  as  he  was  of  his  social  position, 
and  to  him  Betty's  lover  was  a  Jew  and  a  cad. 

Jacob  struggled  to  compose  himself.  He  opened  the 
window  and  tried  to  cool  his  burning  face  by  leaning  out 
into  the  air,  but  the  memory  of  a  phrase  in  that  letter 
brought  him  back  into  the  room  again.  .  .  .  "Your  sense 
of  what  is  right  and  honourable  is  not  so  perverted  .  .  ." 
he  read,  and  clenched  his  hands,  and  swore  viciously  under 
his  breath.  He  was  utterly  exasperated  by  the  knowledge 


THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

that  he  had  no  power  to  vindicate  himself;  no  weapon 
wherewith  to  pierce  that  dreadful  Pharisaism. 

But  the  scene  upstairs  was  still  vividly  in  his  mind.  He 
had  been  grossly  insulted  and  misunderstood;  he  furiously 
desired  revenge;  but  this  man  was  Betty's  father,  and 
Jacob  realised  that  he  must  control  himself  when  Betty 
came  down.  He  had  promised  to  find  a  basis  for  compro- 
mise, and  that  was  not  to  be  discovered  by  violent  recrimi- 
nations and  abuse. 

He  picked  up  the  other  letter  and  read  it  hurriedly;  but 
Mrs.  Lynneker's  appeal  to  her  niece  conveyed  no  impression 
to  him.  His  mind  refused  to  occupy  itself  with  anything 
but  the  composition  of  replies  to  Mr.  Gale,  that  varied 
between  somewhat  abusive  reflections  on  the  bigotry  and 
stupidity  of  country  parsons  and  dignified,  brilliantly 
phrased  expositions  of  Jacob's  attitude  towards  morals  and 
decency,  including  a  definition  of  the  class  labelled  "right- 
minded  people." 

He  was  in  the  middle  of  a  most  impressive  sentence  when 
Betty  opened  the  door. 

She  looked  at  him  anxiously,  as  if  she  was  afraid  that 
he  might  be  greatly  distressed.  "Have  you  read  them  ?"  she 
asked. 

Jacob  made  a  gallant  effort  to  appear  unconcerned.  "Yes, 
I've  read  them,"  he  said.  "Come  in  and  sit  down.  I  want 
to  talk  to  you  quietly  about  everything." 

"Of  course,  you're  very  angry,"  she  said. 

"I  was,"  he  prevaricated.     "Just  for  a  minute  or  two." 

"And  you've  read  Aunt  Mary's  letter  as  well?" 

"Yes,  I  think  so."  He  took  it  up  and  glanced  at  it.  "I 
don't  know  that  I  quite  understood  it.  I — I  was  rather 
upset  by  the  other.  I  want  to  talk  to  you  about  that 
first." 

"It  isn't  really  of  the  least  importance,"  she  put  in  quickly. 
"It  didn't  have  any  effect  whatever  upon  me.  I  knew  he 
would  write  like  that.  He  was  frightfully  angry,  of  course. 
You  must  make  allowances  for  that.  He  doesn't  know  any- 
thing about  you,  you  see,  and  probably  didn't  believe  half 


THE    COLLABORATORS  215 

the  things  I  said  in  my  letter— I  don't  think  he  could  have 
read  most  of  them.  .  .  ." 

"I  must  answer  him,"  Jacob  said. 

"I  shouldn't,"  Betty  urged.  "It  won't  do  any  good. 
It'll  only  .  .  ." 

"I  know  it  won't  do  any  good,"  interrupted  Jacob ;  "not  to 
him  or  to  you ;  but  it'll  do  me  good.  I've  got  to  recover  a 
little  of  my  self-esteem.  One  always  thinks  of  oneself  as 
privileged  in  some  way,  as  the  centre  of  everything.  I've 
never  seen  myself  from  the  point  of  view  your  father 
takes,  and  I  can't  bear  it.  It'll  stick  in  my  mind  if  I  don't 
work  it  off  somehow.  I  shall  always  remember  that  your 
father  thinks  of  me  as  a  little  Jewish  cad  who  has  disgust- 
ingly seduced  his  daughter." 

"Oh,  darling,  he  doesn't !  .  .  ."  Betty  began ;  but  he  would 
not  listen  to  her. 

"He  does ;  of  course  he  does.  He  has  said  it  in  so  many 
words,"  he  broke  out,  losing  his  self-control.  "He  has 
tried  his  best  to  insult  me  as  badly  as  ever  he  can,  and 
naturally  he  has  been  at  pains  to  point  out  that  I'm  neither 
a  gentleman  nor  a  member  of  the  Church  of  England.  He 
puts  them  in  that  order,  I  notice.  Well,  I  know  I'm  neither, 
but  I  have  some  sense  of  decency  all  the  same.  .  .  ."  He 
stopped  abruptly  and  looked  at  Betty.  "Is  that  how  you 
see  me?"  he  asked. 

"Oh,  darling,  come  here!"  she  said,  and  held  out  her 
arms  to  him. 

He  hesitated  a  moment,  and  then  went  to  her. 

"I  think  you're  the  dearest,  silliest  old  thing  in  the  world," 
she  told  him. 

"But  you  must  have  been  influenced  by  that  letter.  You 
must  have  wondered  .  .  ."  he  suggested. 

"Do  you  really  believe  that?"  she  asked  tenderly. 

He  smiled,  and  then,  growing  serious  again,  he  said: 
"Well,  why  were  you  so  miserable  last  night,  and  why 
did  you  begin  to  pack  yesterday  morning,  and  why  did 
you  suggest  that  we  should  go  and  kill  ourselves?" 


216  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

"It  was  Aunt  Mary  who  made  me  feel  like  that,"  she  said ; 
"and  you  haven't  read  her  letter  yet." 

"Does  she  abuse  me  too  ?" 

Betty  shook  her  head.  "Don't  you  think  you'd  like  to 
read  her  letter  now?"  she  asked.  "That  really  is  im- 
portant." 


He  could  not,  however,  appreciate  the  undoubted  impor- 
tance of  that  letter  until  he  had  come  many  steps  nearer 
to  that  middle  ground  he  had  so  hopefully  indicated.  The 
urgencies  of  Mrs.  Lynneker,  when  he  came  to  read  them  a 
second  time,  appeared  to  him  as  the  commonplace  expres- 
sions of  Evangelical  piety,  and  they  irritated  him  hardly 
less  than  the  abuse  of  her  brother.  Jacob  felt  that  he 
was  being  badgered — attacked  by  those  forces  against  which 
he  had  been  in  revolt  for  so  many  years.  He  wanted  to 
make  some  immense  demonstration  that  would  finally  expose 
the  futility  and  narrow-mindedness  of  these  foolish  be- 
liefs in  the  immediate  concern  and  watchfulness  of  a  higher 
power ;  he  wanted  to  convince  Betty,  as  the  immediate  repre- 
sentative of  all  mankind,  that  such  religion  as  this  was  the 
absurdest  superstition,  a  development  of  animism,  of  the 
terror  and  propitiatory  rites  of  the  savage. 

He  looked  up  at  her  with  a  frown,  mentally  seeking  those 
graphic,  illuminating  phrases  which  should  dispel  the  dark- 
ness of  primitive  fear  from  her  mind. 

"This  seems  to  you  important?"  he  asked. 

They  had  passed  through  many  moments  that  Jacob,  at 
least,  had  definitely  diagnosed  as  "critical,"  but  this  quiet 
opening  of  what  was  intended  to  be  a  calm,  almost  imper- 
sonal discussion,  was  not  included  by  him  in  that  category. 
Yet  never  had  he  been  so  near  to  losing  Betty  as  then. 
He  had  displayed  to  her,  not  for  the  first  time,  but  never 
before  so  definitely,  an  attitude  that  seemed  to  her  little 
less  than  fanatic.  That  in  itself  was  of  small  importance; 
but  sympathy  and  understanding  were  so  essential  for  her 
just  then,  that  to  be  met  by  argument — she  foresaw  it  in- 


THE    COLLABORATORS  217 

stantly  when  he  spoke — seemed  to  her  to  open  out  a  gulf 
between  them  that  could  never  be  bridged. 

She  winced.     "You  don't  understand  it?"  she  asked. 

He  shrugged  his  shoulders.  "I've  heard  and  read  this 
kind  of  thing  so  often,"  he  said. 

She  looked  at  him  coldly,  and  stretched  out  her  hand  for 
the  letter.  "Give  it  to  me,"  she  said.  "Of  course,  if  you 
feel  like  that  about  it  there's  nothing  more  to  be  said." 

"Oh,  but  there  is!"  he  protested;  "everything.  This  is 
just  what  we've  come  in  here  to  talk  about,  to  discuss.  This 
piety  is  at  the  bottom  of  all  your  unhappiness.  On  Sunday 
you  said  you  didn't  believe  in  it  any  more,  but  you  do,  and 
we  shall  never  be  happy  till  you  get  all  these  absurd  super- 
stitions out  of  your  mind." 

"You  don't  understand,"  she  repeated,  and  felt  hopelessly 
that  she  could  never  make  him  understand. 

They  were  within  sight  of  separation  then  for  the  first 
time. 

Jacob  was  biassed  by  the  struggle  through  which  he  had 
come,  by  his  old  revolt  against  religion.  He  had  examined 
it  all  after  he  had  grown  old  enough  to  think  for  himself, 
and  long  after  he  had  rejected  many  another  teaching  of  his 
youth,  once  regarded  as  infallible.  And  he  was  eager  now 
to  pass  on  the  light  to  Betty.  The  whole  thing  was  so 
plain  to  him  that  he  was  sure  that  if  he  could  but  find  words 
he  would  make  it  equally  plain  to  her. 

"Oh,  I  do  understand!"  he  said,  petulantly.  "I  under- 
stand, for  instance,  that  if  you  make  the  tenets  of  Chris- 
tianity the  touchstone  for  all  moral  conduct,  you  and  I  are 
doomed  to  burn  in  hell  for  eternity." 

Betty  shook  her  head  wearily  and  sighed.  "It  isn't  that," 
she  said. 

"Partly,  isn't  it?" 

"I  don't  think  so." 

"That  is  what  your  aunt  would  say.  That's  the  stand- 
point she  argues  from." 

Betty  opened  the  letter  in  debate  and  turned  to  the  third 
page  of  it.  She  knew  that  there  was  something  she  might 


218  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

say  that  would  put  everything  straight,  but  she  could  not 
express  it.  "Listen !  Can't  you  understand  this?"  she  said, 
and  read: 

"  'My  dear,  what  I  want  you  to  do  is  to  look  into  your 
own  heart  and  ask  yourself  whether  some  still  small  voice 
is  not  earnestly  telling  you  that  you  have  done  wrong.' " 

Betty  stopped  there  and   looked  up  at  him. 

Jacob  had  passed  that  sentence  as  a  cliche,  dismissing  it 
with  a  faint  disdain  for  the  mixed  metaphor.  And  in  other 
circumstances  he  would  have  ridiculed  the  sentiment  and 
the  manner  of  it,  and  have  gone  on  to  prove  that  that  "still, 
small  voice"  of  conscience  was  merely  an  echo  of  early 
habit  and  education.  He  saw  the  whole  shape  of  his  argu- 
ment quite  clearly  in  his  mind,  a  fascinating,  demonstrable 
proposition ;  but  with  his  eyes  he  saw  Betty's  .distress.  And 
suddenly  his  irritation  and  rigidity  left  him,  taking  all  his 
logic  and  prepared  oratory  with  them.  He  realised  with  a 
shock  that  from  Betty's  point  of  view  she  had  sacrificed 
everything  for  him,  and  that  he  was  unwilling,  or  unable, 
to  meet  gift  with  gift. 

"Does  your  heart  tell  you  that  you  have  done  wrong, 
darling?"  he  asked. 

She  responded  at  once  to  the  change  in  his  voice.  "Some- 
times," she  said.  "It  has  more  than  once;  I've  felt  that 
it  was  more  than  I  could  bear." 

He  gently  pushed  her  into  a  chair,  and  then  sat  at  her 
feet  and  leaned  his  head  against  her  knees.  "And  I've 
been  such  an  unsympathetic  beast!"  he  said.  "But  now, 
dear,  you  must  tell  me  all  about  it." 

She  put  out  her  hand  and  stroked  his  hair.  "I  don't  know 
that  I  can  put  it  into  words,"  she  told  him.  "You  knew 
I  was  miserable ;  what  else  could  it  have  been  ?" 

"I  thought,  perhaps,  that  you  were  disappointed  in  me; 
that  you  had  found  out  that  you  didn't  care  for  me.  You 
don't  know  how  wonderful  it  is  that  you  should.  I  can't 
always  believe  that  it's  possible." 

She  leaned  over  him.    "What  are  we  to  do?"  she  asked. 


THE    COLLABORATORS  219 

"Can't  we  go  on  as  we  are?"  he  replied.  "Is  your  con- 
science too  much  for  you  ?" 

"Almost.     Sometimes,"  she  said. 

"And  won't  it  ever  get  any  better?" 

"I  don't  know.     How  can  I  know?" 

"Why  doesn't  my  conscience  tell  me  I'm  doing  wrong?" 
he  asked. 

She  took  that  up  with  a  touch  of  eagerness.  "Doesn't 
it?"  she  said.  "Haven't  you  ever  once  felt  that  it  was — 
was  wicked  for  us  to  be  together ;  that  you  ought  to  go  back 
again  to  try  to  live  with — that  other  woman?" 

"Never  once!"  he  replied,  with  magnificent  assurance. 
"And  as  to  the  other  woman,  she  has  definitely  refused  to 
have  anything  more  to  say  to  me." 

"Why  did  she?"  asked  Betty,  lured  away  from  the  point 
at  issue. 

"We  hated  one  another,  that's  all,"  he  explained.  "And 
I  should  never  have  made  advances  in  the  first  instance  if 
it  hadn't  been  for  Barker — the  parson,  you  know." 

"You  do  try  to  do  what  you  believe  is  right,  don't  you?" 
she  pathetically  asked. 

"I  think  I  really  do,"  Jacob  admitted. 

"And  you  really  think  it's  right  for  us  to  be  together?" 

"Good  Lord,  yes !"  he  said  emphatically ;  and  so  came  to 
his  long-postponed  dissertation  on  the  relation  of  conscience 
to  morals. 

She  listened  quietly  enough,  but  it  was  not  his  argument 
that  affected  her  at  that  time.  Later  it  was  all  woven  into 
the  fabric  of  her  re-education,  but  as  yet  she  had  not  learnt 
to  quote  him. 

XI 

Jacob  had  given  in  to  her  on  all  essentials.  He  had  come 
over  to  consider  her  point  of  view,  to  admit  that  she  had  a 
conscience  that  would  not  be  denied  on  logical  grounds 
and  that  must  be  tenderly  treated.  But  he  was  firm  on  one 
point.  He  must  answer  her  father's  letter.  She  might 
write  what  she  would  to  Mrs.  Lynneker,  and  he  would  not 


220  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

criticise  any  admission  that  Betty  might  feel  moved  to  make. 
But  he  must  re-establish  himself  in  his  own  self-esteem  by 
making  his  declaration  of  independence  to  Mr.  Gale.  Jacob 
intended  that  answer  of  his  to  be  a  model,  an  essay  in  right- 
mindedness. 

He  set  about  it  as  soon  as  Betty  had  gone  to  cook  their 
dinner. 

If  he  had  not  had  one  gift  of  the  novelist,  he  might  have 
succeeded,  but  his  too  great  ability  for  adaptation  spoiled 
his  essay  most  completely.  In  argument  with  Betty  he  was 
able  to  display  at  times  a  restful  definiteness ;  he  could 
hold  his  own  point  of  view,  and  work  himself  up  into  a 
satisfying  condemnation  of  any  other.  But  when  he  sat 
down  to  express  himself  on  paper,  his  fastidious  search 
for  a  definite  and  conclusive  statement  of  his  own  position 
left  him  with  the  feeling  that  he  was  quite  incompetent 
to  convince  the  adversary  he  so  clearly  visualised. 

He  pictured  his  correspondent  as  a  model  of  self-satisfied 
righteousness,  and  then  attempted  all  too  successfully  to  see 
things  from  his  opponent's  point  of  view.  He  thought  that 
this,  the  means  of  the  novel,  was  the  only  one  by  which 
he  could  penetrate  those  defences,  and  after  half  an  hour's 
concentration,  he  was  forced  to  admit  that  they  were  im- 
penetrable by  any  argument  of  his. 

His  act  of  intuition  revealed  to  him  that  his  logic  would 
inevitably  appear  as  prejudiced  to  Mr.  Gale  as  Mr.  Gale's 
own  diatribes  appeared  to  Jacob ;  and  once  he  had  recog- 
nised that  indisputable  fact,  he  felt  that  it  would  be  a  waste 
of  effort  to  enter  upon  a  futile  controversy  in  which  he, 
as  the  more  flexible  of  the  two  disputants,  would  probably 
be  worsted.  .  .  . 

When  Betty  came  in  to  tell  him  that  dinner  was  ready  she 
found  him  smiling  happily. 

"Have  you  written?"  she  asked,  with  a  touch  of  anxiety. 

"No,"  Jacob  said  gleefully ;  "but  I've  worked  out  a  really 
fundamental  point  of  psychology  that  will  be  very  useful 
to  me  when  I  come  to  write  novels." 

"Well?"  she  encouraged  him. 


THE    COLLABORATORS 

"I've  discovered  that  the  only  use  of  argument  is  to  con- 
firm one's  own  point  of  view — at  least,  that  is  what  it  comes 
to,"  he  said.  "If  you  want  to  convince  anyone,  you  must 
fill  them  up  with  their  own  theories  until  they  are  sick  of 
them;  and  you  must  never,  on  any  account,  disagree  with 
a  person  you  mean  to  convert." 

"So  you  are  not  going  to  write  to  father?" 

"Waste  of  time,"  returned  Jacob. 

"I'm  glad,"  Betty  said.     "You'd  only  irritate  him." 

"I  suppose  you  knew  that  intuitively?"  he  asked. 

"I  knew  it,  I  don't  know  how,"  she  said. 

"Well,  I've  learnt  it  for  myself  by  thinking  about  it," 
replied  Jacob ;  "and  if  it's  a  slower  method,  it's  the  one 
most  useful  to  the  potential  novelist." 

"Come  along,  dear,  the  dinner  will  be  all  cold,"  was 
Betty's  only  comment  on  his  re-discovery. 


XII 

ABOUT  IT  AND  ABOUT 


THE  great  discussion  had  not  been  of  the  quality  that 
Jacob  had  anticipated;  it  had  been  vague  and  capri- 
cious, failing,  as  such  conversations  always  fail,  to  keep 
to  the  point  at  issue;  but  it  had  nevertheless  opened  the 
way  for  him  to  understand  something  of  what  Betty  was 
suffering.  When  he  read  hesitation  or  depression  in  her 
face  now,  he  could  attribute  those  signs  to  some  fresh  stir 
of  conscience;  he  was  less  perplexed  by  the  fear  that  she 
had  repented  her  sacrifice  because  she  was  disappointed  in 
the  object  of  it. 

And  that  little  piece  of  knowledge  was  of  considerable 
service  to  him  during  the  next  two  weeks,  a  period  that 
was  marked  by  the  arrival  of  many  letters  from  Betty's 
relations,  none  of  them  in  the  least  degree  congratulatory. 

He  had  a  solid  ground  now  for  his  invasion  of  those 
thoughts  which  by  force  of  long  habit  she  would  have  kept 
to  herself.  At  first  each  attack  of  his  was  vigorously  de- 
fended, but  he  had  learned  the  disposition  of  her  forces, 
and  nothing  but  patience  was  needed  to  break  down  her 
resistance. 

"I  shall  be  all  right  if  you'll  only  let  me  alone,"  was  her 
almost  invariable  evasion  when  he  questioned  her  as  to  the 
cause  of  any  new  evidences  of  depression. 

"But  you  must  share  your  trouble  with  me,"  was  his 
obvious  reply.  "I  want  all  your  confidence." 

"It  only  upsets  you  and  interferes  with  your  work," 
she  said  on  one  typical  occasion,  ten  days  after  her  coming 
to  Trevarrian. 

"That's  such  a  secondary  thing,"  he  retorted. 

222 


THE    COLLABORATORS  223 

"Is  it?"  she  asked,  trying  desperately  to  forget  the  letter 
she  had  received  that  morning.  "And  what  are  we  going 
to  live  on  if  you  don't  work?" 

It  was  a  warm,  still  day,  and  they  were  sitting  among  the 
rocks  at  the  end  of  Watergate  Bay,  retreating  every  few 
minutes  before  the  threat  of  the  incoming  tide,  a  game  in 
which  Jacob  found  perpetual  delight. 

"Secondary  for  the  moment,"  he  replied.     "And  can't 
you  see,  dear,  that  it's  worse  for  me  when  you  will  keep 
these  things  to  yourself?     It  isn't  as  if  I  didn't  know.     I 
know  directly  I  see  you  if  you're  worrying  again." 
"I'm  not  worrying,"  was  Betty's  evasion. 
"Do  you  mean  to  tell  me  that  you  haven't  had  another 
beastly  letter  from  one  of  your  relations  this  morning?" 
he  asked. 

"It  wasn't  beastly,"  she  said. 

"Good  Lord!  are  there  many  more  of  'em?"  he  asked. 
"No  more  that  count." 
"Who  was  this  one  from?" 
"My  sister  Hilda." 
"What  did  she  say?" 

"Hadn't  we  better  move  back  a  little?"  asked  Betty. 
"We  shall  get  wet  in  a  minute." 

"Yes,  we'd  better.  There's  quite  a  big  swell  this  after- 
noon," he  remarked,  "although  it's  so  still ;  I  expect  there's 
wind  coming  from  the  south-west.  And  then  you'll  know 
the  joy  of  that  sitting-room  chimney." 

"Oh,  Betty,  isn't  it  glorious  here?"  he  went  on,  when 
they  had  settled  themselves  again  some  way  farther  up  the 
rocks.     "We  shall  never  have  quite  such  a  perfect  time 
again.    Do  be  happy." 
"I  am  happy,"  she  said. 

"You're  not;  but  never  mind.  What  did  your  sister 
say?" 

"Nothing  particular." 

"Is  it  worth  while  to  put  me  off  like  this  every  time? 
he  persisted.     "I  shall  go  on  nagging  until  you  tell  me." 


THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

And  even  then  the  instinct  to  nurse  her  secrets  was  so 
strong  that  she  could  not  tell  him  at  once. 

Hilda's  letter  was  so  unlike  the  others  that  Jacob  could 
not,  at  first,  understand  why  Betty  should  have  been  dis- 
tressed by  it.  She  had  brought  it  with  her,  and  he  read  it 
there  on  the  rocks,  and  protested. 

"But  she  says  that  it  will  make  no  difference  to  her  feel- 
ing for  you,"  he  urged.  "What  more  can  she  say?" 

"Yes;  and  she  says  that  of  course  it  won't  be  easy  for 
us  to  meet  now,  but  we  might  manage  it  if  I  was  in  London 
and  she  came  up,"  Betty  quoted. 

"Well?"  commented  Jacob. 

"Do  you  think  I  would  meet  her  in  some  hole-and-corner 
way,  when  her  husband  didn't  know  anything  about  it?" 
she  asked. 

"Do  you  know  him?" 

"Hardly;  I  think  I  met  him  once  before  the  wedding." 

"Well,  what's  he  got  to  do  with  it  if  your  sister  still 
feels  the  same  about  you?" 

"If  she  did ;  but  she  doesn't,  or  she  wouldn't  be  ashamed 
to  see  me." 

"You're  so  frightfully  sensitive,"  Jacob  said.  "I  don't 
see  how  you  can  make  out  that  she  is  ashamed." 

"It's  there  in  her  letter,  in  every  word  of  it,"  Betty 
said  bitterly.  "Not  so  much  in  the  things  she  says  as  in 
those  she  hasn't  said.  I  know  Hilda,  you  see,  and  you 
don't." 

Jacob  was  only  half -convinced,  but  he  gave  way  on  that 
point,  making  a  mental  note  that  his  impudence  in  having 
attempted  to  describe  a  woman  in  his  novel  was  nothing 
less  than  colossal. 

"Do  you  mind  very  much?"  he  asked. 

"Not  the  least,"  Betty  said.  "I'm  sorry,  of  course;  but 
I  have  seen  very  little  of  Hilda  the  last  year  or  two,  and 
I  don't  know  that  we  were  ever  very  great  friends." 

"And  yet  this  letter  makes  you  miserable?" 

She  did  not  answer  him  immediately,  and  he  took  her 
hand  and  held  it.  "Can't  you  explain,  dear?"  he  insisted. 


THE    COLLABORATORS  225 

He  felt  so  sure  that  it  was  necessary  for  her  to  confess 
her  heart-searchings. 

"It's  so  difficult,"  she  hesitated.  "You  can't  understand, 
and  you'll  argue  with  me.  I  shall  get  over  it." 

"I  do  understand,"  he  said ;  "and  I  promise  you  faithfully 
that  I  won't  argue  this  afternoon." 

She  turned  her  head  and  looked  at  him.  "Well,  can't  you 
see  that  it  isn't  so  much  that  I  care  tremendously  for  my 
people — I'm  afraid  I  don't,  in  a  way — but  they  are  my 
people,  and  they've  let  me  see  pretty  plainly  what  they 
think  of  me.  Even  Hilda's  patronising  and  forgiving  in 
a  condescending  sort  of  way.  I  know  she  doesn't  mean  to 
be,  but  she  simply  couldn't  help  it.  They  all  think  I'm 
wicked,  disgraced  for  ever,  and  they  make  me  feel  that  they 
must  be  right.  It  isn't  as  if  I'd  felt  as  you  do  about  it  to 
begin  with.  I  have  done  it  against  my  conscience,  as  Aunt 
Mary  says;  she  understands  me  the  best  of  all  of  them." 

Jacob  remembered  that  he  had  promised  not  to  argue, 
and  he  knew  no  other  way  of  combating  Beechcombe 
opinion. 

"Well,  what's  to  be  done  about  it,  beloved?"  he  asked. 

"There's  nothing  to  be  done,"  Betty  said;  and  then  she 
expressed  a  wish  that  had  never  before  found  speech  be- 
tween them.  "Oh,  I  wish  she  would  die,"  she  said. 

Jacob  winced.  "Would  it  relieve  all  your  distress  if  we 
could  spend  ten  minutes  in  a  registrar's  office  ?"  he  asked. 

"It  isn't  that  I  really  care  about  that"  she  tried  to  ex- 
plain. "I  know  that  that  wouldn't  make  me  virtuous 
again.  .  .  ." 

"What,  then?" 

"Well,  you  have  got  two  wives,  haven't  you?  And  I've 
got  no  real  claim  on  you." 

"You've  got  ten  million  times  more  claim  on  me  than  the 
other  one  has,"  Jacob  said,  with  a  note  of  passion  in  his 
voice.  "If  ever  there  was  a  truly  sacred  vow  of  lifelong 
devotion  made  by  two  people,  it  was  ours.  We  didn't  make 
it  before  a  government  official,  I  know,  and  perhaps  we 


226  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

haven't  actually  spoken  it  in  words;  but  it's  the  most  tre- 
mendous thing  in  my  life,  for  all  that." 

He  had  put  his  arm  round  her,  and  she  drew  close  to 
him  as  she  said:  "You  wouldn't  ever  give  me  up,  would 
you  ?" 

"It's  utterly  unthinkable,"  Jacob  replied  solemnly. 

And  for  that  time,  at  least,  she  appeared  comforted  and 
almost  content.  They  sat  on  until  it  was  nearly  dark  and 
the  sea  had  driven  them  back  to  the  face  of  the  cliff. 

"I  will  be  happy,"  Betty  said,  as  they  climbed  the  path 
on  their  way  home. 

"If  you're  happy,  I've  nothing  left  to  wish  for,"  was 
Jacob's  fervent  answer. 

ii 

The  south-westerly  gale  that  he  had  prophesied  began  to 
blow  that  same  evening,  at  first  in  little,  uncertain  gusts 
from  the  west,  and  afterwards  backing  and  increasing  stead- 
ily in  force. 

They  were  still  in  the  sitting-room  at  ten  o'clock  when 
the  first  intimation  that  the  wind  had  got  back  towards  the 
south  was  furnished  by  the  celebrated  chimney.  The  little 
column  of  smoke  that  had  lifted  so  steadily  for  the  past 
ten  days  suddenly  gave  a  little  dip,  as  if  it  had  curtsied,  and 
a  thin  wraith  of  vapour  crept  up  under  the  mantelpiece. 

"It's  coming,"  remarked  Jacob  gloomily.  That  smoking 
chimney  was  so  full  of  horrible  associations  for  him  that 
even  now,  in  Betty's  company,  he  could  not  shake  off  the 
feeling  that  there  was  some  omen  of  dread  in  the  threat  of 
another  spell  of  discomfort. 

"I  don't  think  much  of  that,"  Betty  replied  cheerfully. 

"You  wait,"  he  said.  "It  hasn't  begun  yet,  but  it  will. 
We  probably  shan't  be  able  to  use  this  room  to-morrow." 

He  was  a  little  vexed  that  she  was  not  more  apprehen- 
sive, and  insisted  at  some  length  on  the  terrors  that  were 
in  store  for  them. 

"Well,  what  about  the  other  room?"  she  asked,  still  un- 
daunted. 


THE    COLLABORATORS  227 

"I've  never  had  a  fire  there,"  he  said.  "The  room's  full 
of  cases  and  things." 

"They  could  be  cleared  out." 

"I  expect  that  chimney's  just  as  bad,"  he  remarked. 

"Well,  if  this  chimney  does  smoke  very  badly  to-morrow, 
we  can  try  the  other  room  and  see,"  Betty  suggested. 
"There's  no  need  to  get  depressed  about  it  yet,"  she  added. 

"I'm  not  the  least  depressed,"  Jacob  assured  her. 

Nevertheless,  he  found  it  necessary  to  indicate  further 
portents  when  they  went  upstairs. 

"Come  and  listen,"  he  said. 

She  stood  beside  him  at  the  open  window,  and  they 
leaned  out  together.  In  the  intervals  of  the  gale  they  could 
hear  the  long  moaning  of  the  sea  half  a  mile  away  down 
the  valley. 

"It  always  booms  like  that  just  before  and  after  a  gale," 
Jacob  said. 

Betty,  pressed  close  against  him,  did  not  reply. 

"It's  very  wonderful,  isn't  it?"  he  asked,  after  a  pause. 
"We'll  go  down  to  Livelow  after  breakfast  to-morrow  if  it 
isn't  too  fierce." 

"It  makes  me  feel  rather  miserable,"  Betty  said,  with  a 
shiver. 

"It  makes  me  feel  excited,"  Jacob  replied.  .  .  . 

They  both  exulted  in  small  triumphs  the  next  morning. 

There  was  no  need  to  make  any  experiments  with  the 
sitting-room  fire.  Betty,  much  to  her  disgust,  found  the 
hearthrug  covered  with  ashes,  and  the  down-draught  made 
itself  felt  plainly  enough  without  the  superfluous  test  that 
Jacob  made  with  lighted  paper. 

He  could  not  let  the  occasion  pass  without  some  expatia- 
tions  on  the  amazing  resources  of  that  chimney,  and  on 
the  miseries  he  had  endured  during  the  time  that  he  always 
referred  to  as  "the  awful  week." 

Betty  smiled  and  kissed  him.  "Let's  try  the  other  room," 
she  said.  She  appeared  perfectly  happy  that  morning. 

And  in  the  smaller  room  on  the  other  side  of  the  passage 


228  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

she  had  her  triumph,  for  the  flue  there  proved  to  be  a  model 
for  all  Cornish  chimneys. 

"Well,  why  ever  didn't  you  think  of  coming  here  when 
it  blew?"  she  asked. 

"I  don't  know.  It  didn't  occur  to  me,"  Jacob  confessed. 
"I  suppose  I  thought  it  would  be  rather  a  fag  moving  every- 
thing." 

"That  won't  take  long,"  returned  Betty  briskly.  "Sup- 
pose you  begin  by  taking  those  two  cases  out  into  the 
kitchen." 

"Yes,"  Jacob  said ;  but  he  made  no  attempt  to  move. 

"What  are  you  thinking  about?"  she  asked. 

"I  was  thinking  how  different  my  life  would  have  been 
if  I  had  met  you  ten  years  ago,"  he  said. 

"I  should  have  been  just  seventeen,"  commented  Betty. 

He  did  not  reply  to  that.  "I  could  have  done  anything 
if  I  had  had  you,"  he  went  on. 

She  was  still  kneeling  before  the  grate,  but  she  got  up 
then,  put  her  hands  on  his  shoulders,  and  gently  shook 
him. 

"You're  going  to  do  wonderful  things  now,"  she  said. 

"I  can  do  anything  with  you  to  help  me,"  he  said.  "You 
give  me  strength  and  courage." 

"Even  to  go  from  one  room  to  another,"  she  put  in. 

"It  is  just  those  things  that  I  fail  in  so  helplessly,"  he 
said.  "I've  no  initiative;  I  always  anticipate  failure.  I've 
no  faith  in  myself.  That's  to  say,  I  hadn't.  I  have  every- 
thing in  the  world  I  want  now." 

"Are  you  going  on  with  that  book  of  yours  this  morn- 
ing?" she  asked. 

"Darling  dear,  I'll  do  anything  you  tell  me  to  do,"  he  said. 

But  before  he  settled  down  to  work  in  his  new  surround- 
ings he  spent  several  minutes  in  reflecting  that  he  owed 
something  of  the  brightness  and  confidence  of  his  present 
mood  to  the  vagaries  of  that  sitting-room  chimney.  It  had 
driven  him  to  despair  in  the  first  place — a  despair  that 
had  been  an  important  factor  in  bringing  Betty  to  him  in 
Cornwall ;  and  in  the  second  place  it  had  illustrated  for  him 


THE    COLLABORATORS  229 

an  aspect  of  his  own  weakness,  and  the  glorious  way  in 
which  those  deficiencies  of  his  would  now  be  overcome. 

Betty  was  his  perfect  complement,  his  strength  and  his 
feebleness  so  wonderfully  dovetailed  with  hers. 

"I  am  a  lucky  beggar,"  Jacob  murmured,  as  he  forced 
himself  to  concentrate  on  the  subject-matter  of  his  novel. 
There  was  no  evasion  possible  to  him  now.  Betty  would 
insist  upon  his  reading  his  morning's  work  to  her  after 
lunch,  even  if  he  had  only  written  a  single  page.  He  was 
almost  too  happy  to  write. 

111 

The  broad  process  of  change  that  had  begun  to  influence 
Betty — that  had,  indeed,  been  working  in  her  unperceived 
for  many  months — was  so  gradual  that  neither  she  nor 
Jacob  could  appreciate  any  difference  in  her  attitude  from 
week  to  week. 

He  may  have  been  right  in  believing  that  it  was  better 
for  her  to  take  him  completely  into  her  confidence,  but  the 
wonderful  element  of  self-sacrifice  that  was  an  essential 
part  of  her  continually  counselled  the  disguise  of  any  un- 
happiness  she  might  be  suffering.  She  felt  that  her  confes- 
sions must  react  upon  him,  interfere  with  his  work,  and  by 
degrees,  perhaps,  kill  his  love  for  her.  Moreover,  she  had 
always  had  a  tendency  to  take  burdens  upon  herself  with 
just  so  much  recognition  of  the  self-sacrifice  involved  as 
partly  to  justify  her  sisters'  accusation  that  she  often  "made 
a  martyr"  of  herself  unnecessarily. 

And  in  the  old  days  at  Beechcombe,  and  later  in  Mon- 
tague Place,  the  tendency  had  been  fostered  by  the  attitude 
first  of  her  father  and  sisters,  and  afterwards  of  Mrs. 
Parmenter.  For  in  their  different  ways  those  four  people 
had  all  taken  advantage  of  Betty's  willingness  to  save  them 
from  small  troubles,  while  at  the  same  time  criticising  her 
to  that  effect  which  Hilda  and  Violet  had  perhaps  most  ade- 
quately phrased. 

Her  father's  "My  dear,  there  was  really  no  necessity  for 
you  to  have  bothered  yourself,"  or  Mrs.  Parmenter's, 


230  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

"Surely,  Elizabeth,  one  of  the  maids  could  have  done  that," 
contained  the  implication  that  once  again  Betty  was  making 
a  martyr  of  herself.  And  she  had  accepted  the  aspersion 
without  question  of  its  truth,  or  any  reflection  on  those 
who  had  cast  it  upon  her.  She  was  willing  to  admit  that 
while  she  never  gloated  over  her  martyrdom  afterwards, 
she  was  often  conscious  of  her  own  magnanimity,  when  si- 
lently and  unasked  she  took  upon  herself  another's  duties. 

And  it  is  possible  that  this  very  willingness  of  hers  to 
take  trouble  on  behalf  of  others  might  have  developed  into 
something  very  like  a  vice  if  it  had  been  too  long  fostered 
by  the  selfishness  of  the  people  with  whom  she  lived — if 
she  had  grown  old  in  the  management  of  a  Bloomsbury 
boarding-house,  for  example.  But  Jacob  saved  her  from 
that.  If  he  was  selfish,  it  was  in  another  manner,  and  she 
could  not  doubt  that  he  would  have  been  at  any  pains  to 
save  her  distress,  anxiety,  or  even  the  fret  of  small  house- 
hold duties.  They  had  had  a  dispute  as  to  the  lighting  of 
the  kitchen  fire  two  mornings  after  she  came  to  Trevar- 
rian,  but  Jacob  had  insisted  that  that  was  his  affair,  and 
it  was  he  who  now  first  came  down  in  the  bleak  December 
darkness  to  a  cold  kitchen.  It  was  true  that  he  liked  her 
to  make  occasional  reference  to  his  heroism,  but  she  knew 
that  he  never  made  a  martyr  of  himself.  What  he  did,  he 
did  for  the  joy  of  helping  her. 

Nevertheless,  on  various  occasions,  at  increasingly  larger 
intervals  during  the  first  months  of  her  life  with  Jacob, 
Betty's  trouble  came  to  the  surface,  and  was  the  subject 
of  conversation  between  them.  When  he  was  anxious  and 
perturbed,  beseeching  her  with  questions  as  to  whether  or 
not  she  was  happy,  she  instinctively  tried  to  hide  her 
thoughts  from  him,  to  reassure  him,  and  to  wear  an  ap- 
pearance of  happiness  generally  so  well  simulated  that  it 
completely  deceived  him.  But  when  he  seemed  inclined  to 
take  too  much  for  granted,  to  assume  that  she  must  be  con- 
tent, and  that  her  scruples  were  disappearing  under  the 
influence  of  his  reasonable  attack  upon  them,  a  spirit  of 
contradiction  sometimes  moved  her  to  revive  his  anxiety 


THE    COLLABORATORS  231 

by  displaying  again  those  tremors  of  fear,  doubt,  and  shame 
which  still  haunted  her.  And  one  such  occasion  which 
touched  a  climax  they  never  afterwards  reached  was  pre- 
sented on  the  evening  of  Christmas  Day,  six  weeks  after 
she  had  come  to  Trevarrian. 


IV 

Jacob  was  particularly  solicitous  in  the  morning,  moved 
rather  by  a  sense  that  the  festival  would  be  an  unusually 
dull  one  for  her  than  by  the  consideration  that  the  religious 
and  sentimental  aspect  of  the  anniversary  might  revive  pain- 
ful associations. 

"Couldn't  we  do  something  to-day?"  he  asked  at  break- 
fast. "Have  a  celebration  of  some  kind?  It's  our  first 
Christmas  Day  together." 

"What  could  we  do  here?"  Betty  said. 

"Well,  there's  Newquay,  you  know,"  he  suggested.  "We 
might  drive  in  and  have  dinner  at  an  hotel,  or  some- 
thing." 

"And  what  about  the  chicken  I  got  from  Mrs.  Olver?" 
she  asked. 

"That  would  keep  till  to-morrow." 

"I  don't  want  to  go  to  Newquay.  It  would  only  be 
spending  money  for  nothing  at  all,"  Betty  said. 

"I  thought  it  might  cheer  you  up  a  bit,"  he  persisted. 

"I'm  not  un-cheered,"  she  returned,  smiling. 

"Aren't  you?  I  thought  you  looked  a  little  down  this 
morning,"  he  went  on.  "And  it  wouldn't  cost  much  to  go 
in  to  Newquay  and  have  dinner  there." 

"I  don't  think  I  want  to  much,"  she  said. 

"Why  not?"  He  put  the  question  a  little  uneasily.  He 
wondered  if  she  were  afraid  that  she  might  possibly  meet 
someone  she  had  known. 

"Because  I'd  much  sooner  have  dinner  here  with  you," 
she  said. 

"Yes,  but  you  do  that  every  day  .  .  ."  he  began. 


232  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

"I  believe  you're  getting  tired  of  me,"  she  interrupted, 
and  so  effectively  changed  the  conversation. 

And  she  succeeded  so  well  in  her  assumption  of  happi- 
ness during  the  morning  and  afternoon,  that  Jacob  believed 
himself  justified  in  indulging  in  a  fit  of  high  spirits.  He 
gave  free  vent  to  his  enjoyment  of  life  that  day,  rejoicing 
with  a  careless,  boyish  glee  that  was  new  to  her. 

"I  didn't  know  you  could  be  so  silly,"  she  said,  when  he 
entered  into  a  portentous  conversation  with  a  stray  goose 
they  met  in  the  lane  going  down  to  Livelow. 

"Merely  happy,"  he  returned ;  "you  haven't  seen  me  really 
happy  before,  have  you?" 

She  encouraged  him  in  his  light-heartedness  then,  but 
while  she  was  alone  in  the  kitchen  after  tea  her  own  de- 
pression returned,  and  she  made  little  effort  to  hide  it  as 
they  ate  their  imitation  of  a  Christmas  dinner.  Jacob, 
however,  seemed  for  once  to  overlook  the  signs  he  usually 
diagnosed  so  quickly.  He  displayed  a  determined  cheer- 
fulness that  slightly  irritated  her. 

And  when  they  were  in  the  sitting-room  after  the  dinner 
had  been  cleared  away,  she  deliberately  brought  up  the  topic 
she  had  always  avoided  with  such  steady  persistence. 

"We  neither  of  us  had  a  letter  of  any  kind  this  morning," 
she  remarked  suddenly. 

"Why  should  we  ?"  he  returned.  "I  don't  want  letters 
when  I've  got  you." 

She  did  not  respond  to  that  note  of  affection.  "I  think 
Hilda  might  have  written,"  she  said. 

Jacob's  heart  fell.  "You're  not  worrying  about  that,  are 
you?"  he  asked.  "Oh,  don't,  Betty  darling!  There's  no 
reason  on  earth  why  you  should.  Let's  be  happy  to-night." 

She  made  an  effort  to  respond  to  his  appeal,  but  her  re- 
action was  too  strong,  and  the  tears  came  to  her  eyes  even 
as  she  tried  to  smile. 

"Oh,  darling,  what  is  it?"  he  implored.  "Tell  me  what's 
the  matter." 

"Oh,  it's  nothing,"  she  said;  and  then,  inconsequently, 
"Sometimes  I  feel  as  if  I  can't  go  on." 


THE    COLLABORATORS  233 

He  went  over  to  her  and  put  his  arms  round  her.  "Do 
you  really  mean  that?"  he  asked. 

"I  felt  to-day  as  if  I  must  go  away  from  here,"  she  said. 

That  hurt  him.  He  had  been  happier  there  than  he  had 
been  in  all  his  life,  and  to  him  the  place  was  wonderful  and 
beautiful  as  no  other  place  could  ever  be.  He  had  hoped, 
fondly,  it  seemed,  that  Betty  would  come  to  share  his  love 
for  Trevarrian.  "We  can  go  somewhere  else,  if  you  like," 
he  said  coldly. 

"No  other  place  would  be  any  better,"  she  said.  "I 
daren't  go  back  to  London." 

He  got  up  and  began  to  pace  the  room. 

"I  thought  you  were  getting  over  that  feeling,"  he  ven- 
tured. 

"I  don't  believe  I  shall  ever  get  over  it,"  she  replied. 

"What  will  you  do,  then  ?" 

"Nothing.     There  isn't  anything  to  do." 

"Do  you  want  to  go  away  from  me  ?"  He  put  the  ques- 
tion without  the  least  uncertainty  in  his  own  mind  as  to 
her  answer,  and  he  was  shocked  and  suddenly  afraid  when 
she  said  drearily: 

"I  don't  know." 

He  stopped  in  his  walk  and  looked  a.t  her.  She  was  lean- 
ing forward,  her  elbows  on  her  knees,  the  picture  of  de- 
jection. And  the  old  doubt  sprang  up  again  in  his  mind. 
Was  she  tired  of  him?  he  wondered.  It  seemed  so  impos- 
sible that  she  could  have  no  other  motive  than  a  mere  un- 
easiness of  conscience — after  six  weeks. 

"What  could  you  do  if  you  went  away?"  he  asked. 
"Would  you  go  home?  Would  your  people  overlook  this 
episode?" 

"I  couldn't  go  home  again,"  Betty  said  positively.  "That's 
all  done  with." 

"Where  could  you  go,  then?" 

"I  could  always  take  a  place  as  cook,  if  it  came  to  the 
worst." 

He  looked  his  despair.    "You  are  just  torturing  yourself 


234,  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

and  me  for  nothing,"  he  broke  out.  "What  is  it  all  about  ? 
Have  I  disappointed  you?" 

"Oh,  it  isn't  you,"  she  said.  "You  can't  understand; 
you'll  never  understand  how  I  feel  about  it." 

"Still  conscience?"  he  asked;  and  although  she  made  no 
reply,  he  knew  that  he  need  look  no  farther  for  the  reason 
of  her  present  mood. 

And  argument,  the  only  effective  weapon,  as  it  seemed, 
was  denied  to  him,  not  only  because  she  had  begged  him 
not  to  reason  with  her,  but  also  because  he  had  seen  for 
himself  how  useless  was  logic  against  her  sense  of  convic- 
tion. She  believed  him  to  be  prejudiced,  and  his  most 
earnest  statement  wore  an  air  of  sophistry.  He  knew  how 
she  stiffened  herself  and  set  her  mind  against  argument. 
But  if  they  were  ever  to  be  happy  together,  he  must  devise 
some  means  to  counter  this  depression  of  hers.  If  it  were 
allowed  to  take  hold  of  her,  it  would,  in  time,  destroy  them 
both.  And  no  means  presented  itself  to  him  but  the  appeal 
to  common  sense. 

"Of  course,  you  won't  listen  to  me,"  he  said,  after  a  long 
interval  spent  in  steering  a  meticulous  course  up  and  down 
the  room. 

She  sighed,  as  if  she  were  already  weary  of  talking. 

"Oh,  Betty  darling,  won't  you  use  your  common  sense  in 
this  as  in  other  things?"  he  pleaded. 

"I  do  try,"  she  said. 

That  upset  the  attack  he  had  finally  determined  to  make. 
He  realised  that  he  had  been  about  to  use  a  useless  blud- 
geon, that  he  had  failed  again  in  intuition,  that  he  had  not, 
indeed,  understood  her. 

"But  I  can't  get  over  the  feeling  that  I'm  doing  wrong," 
she  added,  before  he  had  time  to  applaud  her  effort. 

"And  you  don't  think  I  could  help  you  ?"  he  asked  feebly. 

She  looked  up  at  him.  "I  don't  see  how  you  can,"  she 
said — "how  anybody  can." 

He  felt  checked  and  helpless  before  a  return  of  the  old 
inertia.  The  task  was  too  much  for  him ;  he  could  not  com- 


THE    COLLABORATORS  235 

bat  this  opposition  of  hers.  He  gave  up  his  pacing  of  the 
room,  and  sat  down. 

"Well,  then,  what's  to  be  done?"  he  asked.  "We  can't 
go  on  like  this.  If  you  feel  all  the  time  that  you're  acting 
against  your  conscience,  you  mustn't  stay.  It  doesn't  matter 
about  me." 

"Would  you  let  me  go  ?"  she  said,  with  a  new  note  in  her 
voice  that  he  wrongly  attributed  to  relief  at  the  prospect 
of  release. 

"I'm  not  going  to  keep  you  here  to  make  you  miserable," 
he  returned.  "If  you  find  that  you  can  never  be  happy  with 
me,  the  sooner  we  separate  the  better  for  both  of  us."  He 
spoke  without  bitterness  or  resentment.  It  seemed  to  him  at 
that  moment  as  if  he  only  wanted  the  ease  of  certainty. 

"And  what  would  you  do  if  I  went  ?"  she  asked. 

"Oh,  what  does  it  matter  what  I  do?"  he  said,  with  the 
same  unemotional  detachment.  "I  don't  see  that  we  need 
consider  me  at  all." 

She  got  up  quickly  and  came  over  to  him.  He  was  lean- 
ing forward,  and  she  gently  pushed  him  back  into  the  chair 
and  sat  down  on  his  knee. 

"I  will  be  good,"  she  said  softly. 

He  clutched  her  tightly  as  if  she  had  nearly  slipped  from 
him.  "But  can  you  be  happy?"  he  asked. 

"It's  only  now  and  then  I  feel  like  this,"  she  said.  "I 
shall  get  over  it.  I  know  it's  very  silly,  but  sometimes  I 
can't  help  it." 

They  both  realised  that  she  had  made  an  immense  admis- 
sion. If  she  knew  that  her  feeling  of  shame  and  remorse 
was  "silly"  and  was  determined  to  fight  it,  the  worst  was 
over. 

And  Jacob's  thought,  transcending  for  an  instant  the  little 
limitations  of  time,  urged  him  to  say: 

"How  we  shall  both  laugh  at  these  crises  of  ours  in  five 
years'  time." 

"We  shan't  believe  they  ever  happened,"  returned  Betty. 


236  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 


She  was  materially  assisted  in  her  efforts  towards  recov- 
ery by  the  single  attitude  adopted  by  her  own  people.  They 
had  now  ceased  to  write  to  her,  and  none  of  them  had  at- 
tempted to  deal  directly  with  the  slightly  pathetic  state- 
ment of  feeling  she  had  tentatively  urged  as  an  excuse  for 
her  amazing  depravity.  Aunt  Mary  had  weakened  her  first 
appeal  by  repeating  it;  her  father  and  Violet  had  each  in 
their  own  way  painted  again  the  picture  of  the  only  form 
of  virtue  that  could  lead  to  spiritual  and  social  salvation; 
Hilda  had  temporized  on  the  side  issue  of  how  difficult  it 
would  be  for  her  to  meet  Betty  if  she  ever  went  back  to 
town ;  and  only  the  intimidating  Northampton  aunt  had  ap- 
proached the  real  issue  in  a  terrific  argument  that  was 
summed  up  in  an  opening  phrase  to  the  effect  that  "this  kind 
of  thing  never  answered" — the  emphasis  of  the  word  twice 
underlined,  demonstrating  the  certainty  won  by  Mrs.  Gale's 
inferentially  unlimited  experience. 

Betty  grew  increasingly  ready  to  dismiss  her  family  with 
a  shrug  of  her  shoulders.  All  her  relations  had  combined 
to  condemn  her  without  a  trial.  They  were  so  magnificently 
certain  of  what  God  and  Society  would  say,  that  they  evi- 
dently felt  it  superfluous  to  make  any  inquiry  as  to  the 
possible  merits  of  a  particular  case.  And  this  absolute 
refusal  to  condescend  to  argument,  this  unhesitating  as- 
sumption that  every  question  with  regard  to  sexual  morality 
had  been  finally  settled  in  the  Garden  of  Eden,  precisely 
four  thousand  and  four  years  before  the  birth  of  Christ, 
had  given  Betty  far  more  cause  for  doubt  than  the  whole 
volume  of  reason  that  Jacob  was  willing  to  pour  out,  if  ever 
he  were  given  the  least  encouragement.  She  felt  that  if  the 
others  had  too  little  to  say,  he  had  too  much ;  that  his  very 
eloquence  gave  his  arguments  the  semblance  of  special 
pleading;  but  the  application  of  her  father's  ready-made 
morality  to  a  particular  case  set  her  wondering  if  any  life 
could  be  guided  by  hard  and  fast  rules.  She  saw  so  clearly 


THE    COLLABORATORS  237 

that  her  own  case  was  an  exception,  and  her  father's  re- 
ligion held  no  place  for  exceptions. 

Moreover,  she  was  more  than  a  little  disgusted  by  her 
sisters'  lack  of  charity.  Violet  was  acidly  superior,  and 
Hilda's  concessions  seemed  to  be  due  rather  to  an  admis- 
sion of  personal  weakness  than  to  any  willingness  to  allow 
that  Betty  might  have  been  justified  by  peculiar  circum- 
stances. And  Betty  realised  very  clearly  that,  if  the  cases 
had  been  reversed,  if  Hilda,  for  example,  had  broken  the 
laws  of  Beechcombe  by  a  similar  or  even  a  far  worse' irregu- 
larity, she  herself  would  have  been  full  of  sympathy  and 
love  for  the  offender — would,  in  fact,  have  considered  the 
person  rather  than  the  offence.  Was  it  the  influence  of  re- 
ligion, she  wondered,  or  of  individual  character  that  made 
so  much  difference? 

One  day  in  January  she  put  the  question  to  Jacob. 

He  laughed,  and  asked  her  if  she  were  not  tempting  him 
to  display  his  forbidden  powers  of  argument. 

"I  have  been  trying  to  argue  it  out  for  myself,"  Betty 
admitted. 

"You  will  get  farther  that  way  than  by  listening  to  me," 
Jacob  said  eagerly.  "That  was  what  I  always  wanted  you 
to  do;  I  only  wanted  to  start  you  .  .  ." 

"In  a  certain  direction,"  she  put  in. 

"Well,  not  necessarily,"  he  said  thoughtfully.  "The 
point  is  that  I  wanted  you  to  examine  the  whole  question 
for  yourself,  instead  of  taking  everything  you  had  been 
taught  for  granted.  I  knew  that  if  once  you  began  to 
think  .  .  ." 

"I  should,  come  over  to  your  point  of  view?" 

"Yes." 

"You  know  you're  just  as  certain  you're  right  on  one  side 
as  my  father  is  on  the  other,"  Betty  said. 

He  saw  no  way  out  of  that  except  by  submitting  that  he 
had  looked  at  both  sides  and  her  father  only  at  one. 

"And  you  think  if  anyone  looks  at  both  sides  .  .  ."  Betty 
began. 


238  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

"Honestly  and  conscientiously,  without  prejudice,"  he 
interpolated. 

"Well,  without  prejudice  as  far  as  possible,"  Betty  con- 
tinued, "you  think  anyone  who  does  that  is  sure  to  come 
over  to  your  side?" 

"Any  reasonable  person,"  he  said,  by  way  of  qualifica- 
tion. "But  there  are  heaps  of  people  who  can't  get  rid 
of  prejudice  and  can't  see  things  for  themselves."  He 
paused  a  moment,  and  then  made  a  frontal  attack  by  adding : 
"Well,  you  are  coming  round  to  my  point  of  view,  any- 
way." 

"I've  got  to,  if  I'm  to  have  any  peace  of  mind,"  said 
Betty,  pointing  the  essential  he  had  overlooked. 

He  had  to  admit  that  the  wish  to  believe  was  an  aspect  of 
prejudice  that  would  not  be  denied. 

Betty  returned  to  her  original  question. 

"Is  it  only  religion  that  makes  people  so  narrow-minded  ?" 
she  asked. 

"It  must  influence  them  that  way,  mustn't  it?"  replied 
Jacob,  trying  to  be  very  fair  and  reasonable.  "If  you  are 
absolutely  certain  where  we  come  from  and  where  we'll 
go  to,  and  who  made  the  rules,  and  what  the  rules  are,  you 
must  stick  to  it  all.  And  of  all  the  religions  of  the  last 
two  or  three  thousand  years,  Christianity  has  been  the  most 
clearly  defined  and  the  most  ferocious.  And  you  know  the 
more  definite  a  religion  is,  the  better  chance  it  has  of  sur- 
viving. The  majority  of  people  don't  want  to  think  things 
out  for  themselves,  they  aren't  capable  of  doing  it;  and  so 
they  are  thankful  to  have  a  set  of  rules  to  meet  every 
case." 

"Isn't  it  a  good  thing  for  most  people  that  they  should 
have  a  religion  like  that  to  help  them?"  Betty  put  in. 

"Oh,  very  likely,"  Jacob  replied;  "the  point  is — is  it 
true?" 

"Many  clever  men  and  women  have  believed  in  it." 

"Heaps  and  heaps  of  others,  equally  clever,  haven't.  But 
that's  no  argument." 


THE    COLLABORATORS  239 

"I  don't  think  argument  helps  much,"  Betty  said.  "It's 
what  one  feels  about  things." 

"Argument,  reason,  helped  me,"  returned  Jacob;  "but  I 
don't  want  to  force  it  on  you.  But,  Betty,  darling,  you  are 
beginning  to  feel  that  I  may  be  right,  aren't  you?  That's 
the  important  thing  so  far  as  we  are  concerned." 

"I  think  my  relations  have  been  so  unfair,"  she  said. 
"Not  one  of  them,  not  even  Aunt  Mary,  has  troubled  to  find 
out  the  truth  about  us." 

"But  that's  only  a  particular  application  of  what  I've  just 
been  saying,"  protested  Jacob. 

"Is  it?"  Betty  said  innocently.  "Well,  I  can  understand 
the  application,  you  see." 

And  by  whatever  road  she  came  to  understanding,  she 
was  certainly  less  troubled  than  she  had  been.  The  "crises" 
grew  less  frequent  and  less  severe.  A  certain  stubbornness 
of  character  helped  her.  The  lack  of  charity  displayed  by 
her  family  aroused  her  opposition.  She  was  not  so  per- 
verted as  they  seemed  to  believe,  and  by  a  constant  defence 
of  her  own  conduct,  she  was  coming  to  an  ever  firmer 
conviction  in  her  own  and  Jacob's  rectitude  of  motive. 

The  first  intrusion  of  the  outside  world  into  their  Cor- 
nish solitudes  served,  happily,  to  confirm  her  confidence. 


VI 

Meredith's  return  to  Forth  had  been  repeatedly  post- 
poned. He  had  written  two  or  three  times  to  Jacob— placid, 
friendly  letters,  proving  that  he  had  not  gone  away  with 
any  feeling  of  enmity,  after  that  evening's  criticism.  His 
book  was  to  be  published  at  the  end  of  April,  and  he  seemed 
to  think  that  it  had  a  fair  chance  of  success. 

Jacob  had  answered  in  the  same  vein,  but  he  had  said 
nothing  of  Betty's  presence  at  Trevarrian;  and,  when  he 
heard  one  Tuesday  at  the  end  of  January  that  Meredith 
was  coming  back  to  Forth  on  the  following  Thursday, 
there  was  one  brief  moment  of  consternation. 

"Need  he  know  that  I'm  here?"  Betty  asked;  and  Ja- 


240  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

cob,  losing  his  presence  of  mind,  suggested  that  the  fiction 
of  a  private  marriage  might  be  maintained. 

"But  he  knows  that  you're  married  already,"  protested 
Betty. 

"She  might  have  died,"  Jacob  hazarded. 

Betty  looked  down  at  her  ring  and  pursed  her  mouth. 
"It  doesn't  sound  convincing,"  she  said,  and  added :  "Did 
he  ever  meet  her?" 

"Lola  ?  Oh,  Lord,  no !  I  met  him  first,  long  after  that," 
Jacob  answered. 

"Couldn't  I  go  out  when  he  comes?"  was  Betty's  next 
suggestion. 

But  by  that  time  Jacob  had  recovered  his  common  sense. 
"Oh,  my  dear,  no!"  he  said.  "I  don't  know  what  I  was 
thinking  about,  to  suggest  that  we  should  tell  him  we  were 
married.  Meredith's  a  perfectly  open-minded  chap,  if  he 
does  write  rather  old-fashioned  books;  he  won't  care  two- 
pence. We  must  be  honest  about  it — of  course  we  must." 

Betty  blushed  vividly.  "I'd  much  sooner  not  see  him," 
she  said. 

"Darling,  we  must  meet  people  sometimes,"  Jacob  pro- 
tested; "and  how  could  we  make  a  better  beginning  than 
this?" 

"I  don't  see  why  we  should  ever  jneet  people,"  Betty  said ; 
and  cancelled  her  statement  immediately  by  adding:  "Well, 
you  must  go  over  and  see  him  first  and  tell  him." 

"And  afterwards  he  can  come  over  here?" 

"We'll  see  what  he  says." 

"Oh,  he'll  be  all  right,"  Jacob  confidently  pronounced. 

Nevertheless,  he  was  conscious  both  of  nervousness  and 
reluctance  when  he  was  actually  sitting  in  Meredith's  room 
on  the  following  Friday  morning.  •  His  story  bore  such  a 
different  aspect  in  those  surroundings  and  in  the  presence 
of  Meredith,  with  nearly  all  the  tan  blanched  from  his 
face,  talking  about  London  and  literature  and  the  people 
he  had  seen.  It  appeared  that  he  had  met  several  writers 
of  contemporary  fame,  writers  who  had  asked  to  be  intro- 
duced to  him.  He  told  his  successes  modestly  enough,  but 


THE    COLLABORATORS  241 

he  was  obviously  flattered,  and  Jacob  had  a  faint  twinge 
of  jealousy.  His  own  book  seemed  suddenly  trivial  and 
worthless,  himself  a  nonentity,  and  his  beautiful  love-story 
no  more  than  a  common  intrigue. 

He  hesitated  for  more  than  an  hour,  listening  to  stories 
concerning  the  perquisites  of  literary  success,  before  he 
dared  to  open  his  own  confidence.  But  the  inevitable  pause 
came  at  last,  and  when  he  was  asked,  not  for  the  first  time, 
what  he  had  been  doing  and  how  his  own  book  was  "go- 
ing," he  screwed  himself  up  to  his  recital  of  adventure. 
He  was  so  overwhelmingly  anxious  to  display  his  story  in 
its  true  colours  and  proportions. 

He  yawned  nervously  and  got  out  of  his  chair.  "Well, 
something  tremendous  has  happened  to  me  since  you've 
been  away,"  he  began. 

Meredith  looked  his  surprise,  and  encouraged  him  by 
saying:  "What  a  chap  you  are!  Why  have  you  kept  it 
dark  all  this  time,  and  let  me  go  on  gassing  about  myself  ?" 

"I  don't  know,"  Jacob  said.  "I  was  very  interested  in 
all  those  people  you've  met.  And  besides,  I  find  it  rather 
difficult  to  tell  you;  I  don't  know  why  I  should,  but  I  do. 
I  say,  do  you  remember  Mrs.  Parmenter's  boarding-house 
in  Montague  Place,  and  her  partner,  Miss  Gale?" 

"Well,  rather,  of  course  I  do,"  replied  Meredith,  still 
obviously  puzzled.  "I  didn't  often  see  Miss  Gale,  she  was 
down  in  the  kitchen  most  of  the  time;  pretty,  rather  shy 
girl  wasn't  she?" 

Jacob  grew  hotter  still.  He  was  glad  that  Meredith  al- 
ready knew  Betty,  that  saved  much  tedious  explanation; 
but  this  description  of  her  was  so  utterly  inadequate  and 
banal. 

"Yes,"  he  said  deliberately.  "Her  father's  got  a  living 
in  Buckinghamshire,  at  a  place  called  Beechcombe."  He 
felt  that  it  was  quite  essential  that  he  should  lay  some  stress 
upon  Betty's  social  position;  it  seemed  to  give  the  whole 
affair  a  value  of  dignity  and  sincerity. 

"Well  ?"  Meredith  prompted  him,  quite  at  a  loss  to  fore- 
see the  climax. 


THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

"She  and  I  fell  in  love  with  one  another  when  I  was  at 
Montague  Place,"  Jacob  went  on  desperately.  "Irrevocably, 
you  know.  It's  the  most  wonderful  thing  that  ever  hap- 
pened to  me." 

"Great  Scott!  and  you  never  gave  me  the  least  hint 
before  I  went  away,"  said  Meredith.  "What  a  secretive 
person  you  are!" 

"Well,  you  know  I'm  married,"  put  in  Jacob. 

"And  now  I  suppose  you're  going  to  get  a  divorce?" 

"I  can't.  It  isn't  possible.  She  won't  and  I  can't,"  Jacob 
explained. 

"What  are  you  going  to  do,  then?" 

"She's  here — Miss  Gale,  I  mean,"  Jacob  blurted  out, 
"living  with  me  at  Trevarrian." 

Meredith  whistled. 

"Now,  don't  for  God's  sake  think  that  she's  that  sort 
of  person !"  Jacob  said  fiercely. 

Meredith  looked  a  trifle  abashed.    "What  sort  ?"  he  asked. 

"The  sort  you  whistle  at  and  look  rather  furtive  about," 
Jacob  said,  fumbling  for  language.  "I  want  you  to  come 
over  and  see  us,  but  you  must  understand.  She's  terribly 
sensitive.  She's  had  it  all  tremendously  on  her  conscience. 
She  only  did  it  for  my  sake.  I  don't  mean  that  she  doesn't 
care  for  me — I  think  she  does,  incredible  as  it  seems — but 
she  realises  all  she  has  given  up,  and  she  .  .  .  Oh,  look 
here,  what  I  want  you  to  understand  is  that  unless  you 
can  be  most  awfully  decent  to  her,  I  don't  want  you  to  come 
over.  I  shall  tell  her  you've  broken  your  leg,  or  your  neck, 
or  something.  I  suppose,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  that  you  don't 
'disapprove,'  do  you?" 

"Good  heavens,  no!"  returned  Meredith.  "Why  should 
I?  How  long  has  she  been  here?" 

"Since  the  middle  of  November.  You're  very  quiet 
about  it." 

"You  haven't  given  me  much  chance  yet,"  said  Meredith, 
smiling.  "Do  you  want  me  to  congratulate  you?" 

"She  must  have  spent  all  her  time  in  the  kitchen  when 


THE    COLLABORATORS  243 

you  were  at  Montague  Place,  I  should  think,"  was  Jacob's 
reply. 

"I  certainly  didn't  see  much  of  her,"  Meredith  said. 

"Well,  what  are  you  going  to  do  ?"  Jacob  asked. 

"I'll  certainly  come  over  if  you'll  let  me." 

"Come  to  dinner  to-night?" 

"All  right.     Thanks.     I  will." 

"I  must  get  back  now,"  Jacob  concluded.  "She's  been 
alone  all  the  morning.  She  wouldn't  see  you  until  I'd  found 
out  how  you  felt  about  it.  Good  Lord,  old  chap!  I  don't 
envy  you  your  success  now." 

As  he  walked  back,  he  felt  that  he  had  closed  on  the  right 
note;  that  he  had  at  least  partly  expressed  his  attitude  at 
the  end.  And,  on  reflection,  he  took  himself  to  task  for  the 
one  twinge  of  jealousy  he  had  suffered  when  he  had 
listened  to  all  that  talk  of  literary  society.  What  could 
he  ever  want  with  literary  society  while  he  had  Betty  ?  And 
what  an  odd  fish  Meredith  was!  He  practised  the  art  of 
a  romantic  novelist,  and  yet  he  had  not  asked  a  single 
question  as  to  the  psychology  of  all  the  marvellous  things 
that  had  been  happening  to  Jacob.  "He  knows  nothing 
about  love  or  life,"  was  Jacob's  dismissal  of  Meredith, 
"and  he  isn't  even  willing  to  learn."  And  Meredith's  novels 
were  a  success! 

VII 

Jacob  was  comfortably  assured  of  the  success  of  his  mis- 
sion, but  his  report  of  it  was  not  particularly  convincing 
to  Betty. 

"But  what  did  he  say?"  she  persisted,  when  Jacob  had 
given  a  further  exposition  of  his  own  part  in  the  conver- 
sation. 

"Well,  he  didn't  say  much.  He  took  it  all  so  much  for 
granted,"  Jacob  explained,  trying  vainly  to  remember  any 
categorical  expression  of  Meredith's  opinion.  "He  didn't 
hold  forth,  you  know;  but  I  asked  him  once  if  he  disap- 
proved in  any  way,  and  he  said  he  didn't  quite  definitely. 


244  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

On  reflection,  that  appeared  the  only  plain  statement  that 
Meredith  had  made. 

Betty  looked  uneasy. 

"Really  it's  all  right,  darling,"  Jacob  assured  her.  "I've 
reported  it  very  badly,  but  I'm  absolutely  sure  that  you 
needn't  mind  meeting  him." 

"It's  all  very  well  for  you,"  was  her  retort. 

"Well,  I  don't  know  what  more  you  expected  him  to 
say,"  said  Jacob.  "What  more  could  he  say?" 

"Didn't  he  seem  surprised?"  she  asked. 

"A  little,  at  first,"  Jacob  said.  "Not  at  the  fact,  I  take 
it,  but  at  its  being  you  and  me." 

"He  wouldn't  have  expected  us  to  do  anything  of  that 
sort,  you  mean?" 

"Oh,  now  you're  going  to  twist  it  all  round,"  Jacob  ex- 
postulated. "He  would  probably  have  been  far  more  sur- 
prised if  I  had  told  him  that  we  were  married.  But,  you 
see,  he  was  naturally  astonished  to  hear  the  news  in  a 
general  way,  if  only  because  I'd  never  said  a  word  to  him 
about  it  before." 

"Oh,  I  dare  say  you're  right,"  Betty  conceded,  and  then 
added :  "But  I  wish  he  wasn't  coming,  all  the  same.  Jimmy 
dear,  must  we  see  people?  I  would  so  much  sooner  not." 

"Stay  here  always?"  he  suggested,  frowning. 

"I  thought  you  liked  this  place  so  much." 

"So  I  do;  but  .  .  ." 

"You're  getting  a  little  tired  of  it — and  of  me?" 

"Oh",  my  dear!"  he  said  happily,  and  his  reply  to  that 
second  point  was  so  assuringly,  almost  complacently,  ready, 
that  the  question  of  meeting  people  or  leaving  Trevarrian 
was  temporarily  abandoned.  He  was  thrilled  by  the  sug- 
gestion that  his  devotion  had  become  necessary  to  her. 
This  response  had  been  the  ideal  he  had  always  cherished, 
and  now  that  he  found  it  for  the  first  time,  he  recognised 
that  it  filled  his  need. 

"We'll  stay  here  for  ever,  if  you  like,"  was  his  final  assur- 
ance. "I  don't  want  to  meet  anyone  else  while  I  have 
you."  At  that  moment  he  spoke  with  perfect  conviction. 


THE    COLLABORATORS  245 

But  Meredith  opened  out  that  topic  again  when  he  came, 
and  left  them  both  in  doubt  as  to  the  ultimate  wisdom  of 
a  lifelong  sojourn  in  Cornwall. 

His  manner  was  irreproachable,  and  he  gravely  addressed 
Betty  as  "Mrs.  Stahl,"  an  assumption  that  Jacob  after- 
wards explained  to  be  perfectly  justified.  Nevertheless,  she 
was  very  shy  and  silent  during  dinner,  which  was  cere- 
monially "late"  for  the  occasion.  Afterwards,  she  was 
stirred  to  sound  a  trumpet  that  Jacob  steadfastly  refused  to 
blow  for  himself. 

Indeed,  he  had  an  exaggerated  fit  of  modesty  that  even- 
ing, and  persistently  talked  about  Meredith's  success  as  a 
novelist  without  any  reference  to  his  own  ambitions. 

Betty  listened  quietly  at  first,  but  when  Meredith  asked 
Jacob  how  his  own  book  was  getting  on,  and  he  instantly 
dismissed  the  subject,  she  returned  to  it  by  saying: 

"It's  getting  on  splendidly;  I  think  it's  very  good." 

"You're  prejudiced,"  Jacob  put  in;  but  Meredith  said: 

"Oh,  you've  read  it,  of  course.  I  thought  it  was  very 
good  too." 

"I'm  so  anxious  for  him  to  hurry  up  and  finish  it,"  said 
Betty. 

"Yes,  why  don't  you?"  Meredith  asked. 

Jacob  smiled.  "I've  got  so  much  reviewing  to  do,"  he 
said.  "It  takes  me  a  lot  of  time,  and  it's  all  we  have  to 
live  on.  And  when  the  book's  done,  it  won't  sell  enough 
to  pay  the  cost  of  the  typing." 

"My  first  book  didn't,"  Meredith  admitted. 

"Please  don't  discourage  him  about  it,"  Betty  said  quickly. 
"He's  always  saying  that  no  publisher  will  take  it  when 
it  is  written." 

"Oh,  he'll  get  it  taken  easily  enough,"  Meredith  said. 
"There'll  be  no  difficulty  about  that." 

"But  it  won't  sell  afterwards  ?"  Jacob  suggested. 

"Impossible  to  tell,"  Meredith  replied.  "No  one  ever 
knows." 

"I've  often  heard  that  about  plays,"  Jacob  said,  "but  I 
didnrt  know  that  it  applied  to  novels." 


246  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

"Absolutely,"  Meredith  assured  him.  "You  can't  account 
for  the  popularity  of  one  novel  and  the  utter  failure  of  the 
next,  in  most  cases.  We  were  talking  about  that  when  I 
was  up  in  town." 

Betty  and  Jacob  encouraged  him  to  give  them  more 
"shop."  To  them  it  was  all  news  and  intensely  interest- 
ing. They  knew  nothing  of  literary  traffic  by  experience 
— Jacob  had  never  entered  that  circle  of  writers  and  critics 
in  which  the  business  *of  literature  is  discussed  with  just 
as  little  respect  as  the  business  of  any  other  profession. 
He  had  picked  up  a  few  cliches  from  Meredith,  and  the 
reviewing  he  had  done  during  the  past  twelve  months  had 
stimulated  him  to  analyse  the  material  and  methods  of  his 
trade.  But  the  achievement  of  being  an  accepted  novelist 
he  still  conceived  romantically.  He  thought  of  that  glory 
in  the  terms  of  his  own  experience.  From  the  debased 
level  of  an  architect's  assistant  or  of  a  writer  of  advertise- 
ments, the  altitude  of  the  novelist  had  seemed  to  him  hope- 
lessly unattainable.  In  earlier  days,  when  he  had  dreamed 
of  making  a  living  by  writing,  he  had  known  that  he  only 
dreamed.  And  many  times  in  the  last  year,  he  had  been 
deliciously  startled  by  the  reflection  that  he  was,  indeed,  a 
writer  now  himself;  secretly  he  cherished  the  thought  of 
meeting  one  of  his  old  office  acquaintances  and  modestly 
making  the  boast  of  his  present  occupation. 

"It  must  be  awfully  interesting  to  meet  all  these  people," 
Jacob  said,  commenting  on  a  quotation  from  the  obiter  dicta 
of  a  well-known  writer. 

Meredith  agreed ;  the  fact  of  his  recent  recognition  by  a 
larger  public  was  still  a  source  of  considerable  pleasure  to 
him — with  his  last  novel,  the  third  he  had  published,  he  had 
attained  a  circulation  of  nearly  three  thousand  copies;  be- 
fore that,  he  had  achieved  no  more  than  the  dry  reward  of 
a  succes  d'estime. 

"It  is  interesting,"  he  said,  and  then:  "I'm  thinking  of 
taking  rooms  in  town.  I  shall  go  up  about  the  end  of  March 
and  stay  there  until  the  middle  of  July.  Next  autumn  I 


THE    COLLABORATORS  247 

shall  probably  give  up  my  cottage  at  Forth  altogether." 

"Sick  of  solitude?"  asked  Jacob. 

"No,  it  isn't  that,"  Meredith  said ;  "but  I  think  it's  rather 
a  mistake  for  me  to  be  away  from  London  so  much  just 
for  the  next  year  or  two.  It  isn't  that  I  want  to  be  log- 
rolled; I  haven't  the  right  sort  of  influence  for  that,  and  I 
don't  believe  in  it  either;  but  I'm  sure  that  it  helps  me,  to 
meet  people  and  so  on." 

"Oh,  yes,  I  dare  say  it  does,"  Jacob  agreed.  He  was 
suddenly  conscious  of  his  own  isolation.  He  pictured  an 
intellectual,  competent  society,  willing  now  to  receive  Mere- 
dith into  the  inner  circle  of  the  cognoscenti.  He  had 
achieved  something  by  native  talent  and  hard  work;  he 
was  on  the  high  road  to  success.  His  next  book  would 
probably  sell  five  thousand  copies,  and  he  would  be  dis- 
cussed as  one  of  the  young  writers  who  counted.  And, 
by  contrast,  Jacob's  own  book  again  appeared  to  him  as 
little  more  than  an  impertinence.  He  wanted  to  tear  it 
up  and  begin  again ;  to  write  another  novel  on  an  improved 
model.  He  blushed  at  the  thought  of  ever  submitting  John 
Tristram's  story  to  a  publisher ;  it  was  so  formless,  so 
unlike  the  accepted  convention.  He  looked  at  Betty  and 
saw  that  she  too  looked  a  little  depressed. 

But  her  next  speech  showed  that  her  doubt  was  due  to 
a  cause  other  than  his  own. 

"I  think  we  ought  to  go  back  to  London  too,"  she  said. 
"We  were  talking  about  it  to-day." 

Meredith  expressed  some  polite  agreement,  but  Jacob 
knew  that  it  was  to  him  her  speech  was  addressed.  He 
felt  slightly  embarrassed.  He  was  willing  now  to  stay  on 
at  Trevarrian  both  for  her  sake  and  his  own,  but  he  could 
not,  he  thought,  discuss  the  essential  question  before  a  third 
person. 

Betty  seemed  to  have  no  such  hesitation.  "I  think  it 
would  be  better  for  both  of  us,"  she  went  on.  "He  ought 
to  know  more  people — people  who  write  too,  I  mean.  He 
hasn't  enough  confidence  in  himself.  I'm  certain  his  book 
js  going  to  be  a  success,  but  he  gets  so  down  about  it" 


248  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

"You  haven't  said  why  it  would  be  better  for  you,"  Jacob 
ventured.  Her  praise  of  his  work  made  him  uncomfort- 
able in  that  company.  It  was  altogether  delightful  that  she 
should  rate  him  so  highly,  but  the  very  fact  that  she  was 
biassed  in  his  favour,  however  thrilling  in  itself,  vitiated 
her  criticism  of  him  as  a  novelist. 

"You  can't  imagine  that  I  could  want  ever  to  see  my 
friends  again  now,  I  suppose?"  she  said  lightly,  and  turned 
to  him  with  a  smile. 

"Oh,  yes,  I  can,"  said  Jacob,  wondering  what  friends, 
and  not  understanding  the  boast  that  her  next  sentence 
elaborated. 

"Freda,  for  instance,"  she  said,  "and  my  married  sister." 
She  hesitated  a  moment,  and  then,  as  if  to  give  value  to 
her  distinction  and  all  that  it  implied,  she  added:  "The 
other  one,  I  suppose,  would  cut  me  if  she  met  me." 

Jacob  accepted  his  cue.  "She's  getting  rather  bored  with 
me,"  he  said,  turning  to  Meredith. 

"Well,  of  course,"  Betty  replied  quickly.  "But  I'm  sure 
it  would  be  better  for  you  too." 

"Why  not  come  up  when  I  do,  before  Easter?"  asked 
Meredith.  "Where  should  you  go  ?  Back  to  the  boarding- 
house,  or  into  rooms?" 

"It  would  have  to  be  rooms,  I  think,"  Betty  said.  "There 
would  be  no  place  for  him  to  work  in  a  boarding-house." 

"Oh,  well,  there's  plenty  of  time  to  discuss  that,"  said 
Jacob.  He  wanted  to  change  the  conversation.  It  was  all 
a  pretence,  he  thought,  and  it  was  better  not  to  overdo  it. 
They  had  vaunted  that  the  irregularity  of  their  menage 
did  not  preclude  a  return  to  London  and  society,  even  to 
such  creditable  society  as  that  of  Betty's  married  sister; 
over-emphasis  would  destroy  the  effect. 

Meredith,  however,  appeared  quite  innocent  of  their  in- 
tention to  impress  him.  He  may  have  been  reckoning  the 
success  of  his  next  novel. 


THE    COLLABORATORS  249 


VIII 

"Do  you  like  him?"  Jacob  asked,  when  Meredith  had 
gone.  "Yes,"  Betty  said  briefly,  as  if  she  had  abruptly 
clipped  some  qualification,  and  added:  "Is  he  really  very 
clever  ?" 

"I  think  so,"  Jacob  replied,  moved  rather  by  an  instinct 
to  depreciate  himself  and  his  own  work  than  by  any  peculiar 
admiration  of  his  friend's  capacity.  "He  writes  awfully 
well,"  he  explained ;  "fine  English,  you  know,  and  descrip- 
tions— the  sort  of  thing  I  could  never  do." 

"You  can  do  something  better  than  that,"  Betty  said. 

He  smiled  his  deprecation  of  her  partiality. 

"You  can,"  she  insisted.  "You  can  write  about  real 
people." 

"How  do  you  know  that  Meredith  can't  do  that  too  ?"  he 
asked. 

"He  isn't  interested  enough  in  them." 

"You've  seen  him  once,  practically,"  urged  Jacob. 

"Quite  enough.    Aren't  I  right  ?"  she  persisted. 

"Wonderfully,  I  think  you  are,"  he  admitted. 

"I  know,"  Betty  said,  with  an  air  of  wisdom. 

"By  intuition?"  asked  Jacob. 

"Perhaps  not  altogether.  I  was  watching  him  to-night, 
and  he  wasn't  interested  in  you  and  me,  not  a  bit.  He  never 
asked  any  questions." 

"Perhaps  he  thought  that  it  was  more  tactful  not  to." 

"I  dare  say  he's  very  tactful,"  Betty  said,  in  a  tone  that 
expressed  no  superlative  admiration  of  the  quality  in  this 
relation. 

"Well,  don't  you  think  that  was  nice  of  him?"  Jacob 
asked. 

She  pursed  her  mouth.  "It  wasn't  the  sort  of  tact  that 
made  me  feel  at  home  with  him,"  she  said.  "I  should  have 
felt  far  more  comfortable  and  liked  him  better  if  he  had 
taken  a  friendly  interest  in  us,  instead  of  putting  on  a 


250  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

polite  manner  and  pretending  to  take  everything  so  much 
for  granted." 

"I  suppose  he  did  his  best,"  commented  Jacob. 

'Tm  not  running  him  down,"  returned  Betty.  "Only  I 
don't  think  he's  really  as  clever  as  you  seem  to  think  he  is." 

"I  believe  you  know  more  about  him  after  talking  to  him 
once  than  I  do  after  three  years,"  admitted  Jacob.  "But, 
you  know,  funnily  enough,  I  was  thinking  just  the  same 
thing  about  him  this  morning — about  his  not  being  interested 
in  us.  I'm  sure  we  should  have  been  interested  if  it  had 
been  anyone  else — before  we  made  the  great  experiment 
ourselves,  I  mean." 

"Of  course  we  should,"  agreed  Betty. 

For  a  few  moments  Jacob  reflected  happily  on  the  fact 
that  he  had  always  been  interested  in  people.  It  had  not 
occurred  to  him  before  that  this  fact  was  in  some  sense  his 
credential  as  a  novelist.  The  depression  that  he  had  suf- 
fered earlier  in  the  evening  had  been  charmed  away  by 
Betty's  belief  in  him.  He  owed  everything  to  her,  he  re- 
flected, and  then  wondered  if  her  expressed  desire  to  return 
to  London  had  been  something  more  than  a  vaunt  of  inde- 
pendence, if  she  had  meant  to  sacrifice  herself  and  her  own 
wishes  still  further  for  his  sake. 

"I  say,  you  didn't  mean  that  about  going  back  to  town, 
dear?"  he  said. 

She  looked  quickly  up  at  him,  a  look  partly  defensive, 
partly  scrutinising.  "You  want  to  go,  don't  you?"  she 
asked. 

He  hesitated,  trying  to  analyse  his  own  desires ;  he  wanted 
to  be  perfectly  truthful,  and  yet  he  wanted  still  more  to  do 
what  was  best  for  Betty.  "I  don't  know  that  I  do,"  he  said. 
"I'm  quite  happy  here." 

She  did  not  appreciate  the  honesty  of  his  statement,  and, 
reading  into  it  something  of  that  defensive  attitude  which 
was  characteristic  of  her  own  habit :  "You  needn't  mind 
telling  me  if  you  do  want  to  go  back,"  she  said. 

Jacob  was  still  trying  to  regard  the  problem  with  a  lofty 
detachment.  "Of  course  not,"  he  said.  "I  shouldn't  mind 


THE    COLLABORATORS  251 

telling  you  anything.  The  point  is,  really,  do  you  want  to 
go?" 

"I  should  like  to  see  Freda  again,"  was  all  Betty  found 
to  say. 

"Well,  why  not  ask  her  down  here  for  a  week?" 

"She  couldn't  come.  She  has  to  look  after  the  boarding- 
house." 

"Couldn't  old  Parmenter  manage  by  herself  for  once?" 

"She  isn't  well  enough." 

"Betty,  do  you  want  to  go  back  to  town?"  Jacob  asked. 

"I  don't  know.    Yes.    Sometimes  I  think  I  do,"  she  said. 

They  were  both  eager  to  hide  their  own  wishes,  fearing 
lest  they  should  not  fully  accord  with  the  wishes  of  the 
other.  Each  of  them  was  ready  to  make  a  sacrifice,  if 
necessary,  and  they  fenced  in  order  to  expose  the  other's 
secret  desire. 

"I  thought  you  didn't  want  to  meet  people  yet." 

"I'm  getting  over  that.  I  didn't  mind  meeting  Mr.  Mere- 
dith. I  thought  I  should,  but  I  didn't." 

"I  don't  believe  you  want  to  go;  you  think  it  would  be 
good  for  me." 

"I'm  sure  it  would." 

"I'm  not;  and,  anyway,  that's  not  the  point.  You  may 
be  certain  it  wouldn't  be  good  for  me  if  you  were  miserable 
up  there." 

"I  shouldn't  be." 

"How  do  you  know?" 

"Why  should  I  be  miserable?" 

"There's  no  reason  on  earth  why  you  should,  but  .  .  ." 

"I've  got  over  that." 

"I  think  you're  getting  over  it,"  Jacob  admitted.  "I 
wonder  if  you  would  be  happier  in  town  with  more  things 
to  distract  you?" 

In  her  heart  she  dreaded  the  return  still,  but  she  thought 
now  that  she  had  read  his  desire.  "I  expect  I  should  be 
happier  in  some  ways,"  she  said,  but  could  find  no  other  illus- 
tration of  the  "ways"  than  a  repetition  of  her  former  wish 
to  see  Freda. 


252  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

Jacob  signified  his  approval  of  that  friendship.  "Freda 
will  be  so  sensible  about  the  whole  affair,"  he  said. 

But  Betty  shrank  a  little  from  that  statement  of  her  diffi- 
culties. She  had  no  wish  to  be  comforted  by  good  sense. 
"Oh  yes!"  she  said  carelessly,  "Freda  will  be  all  on  your 
side." 

Jacob  noticed  the  difference  in  her  tone,  but  made  no  com- 
ment on  it.  By  way  of  making  everything  quite  clear,  he 
said: 

"You  do  understand,  don't  you,  that  I  don't  care  a  hang 
about  going  back ;  in  fact,  for  many  reasons  I  should  prefer 
to  stay  down  here.  I  do  want  to  do  what's  best  for  you, 
dear.  You  believe  that,  don't  you  ?" 

"Well,  I  want  to  go  back,  so  that's  settled,"  she  replied 
bravely. 

Jacob  smiled.  "Of  course,  we  needn't  settle  it  to-night," 
he  said.  He  was  still  doubtful  as  to  what  she  really  wanted 
to  do. 

IX 

Indeed,  it  seemed  to  Jacob  that  the  project  ultimately  took 
shape  of  itself,  that  it  was  forced  upon  them  almost  without 
their  knowledge.  Certainly  they  never  weighed  the  reasons 
for  and  against  the  plan,  or  calculated  any  balance  of 
benefit.  The  thing  gradually  settled  first  into  a  probability, 
and  then  into  a  certainty.  They  discussed  the  means,  the 
questions  of  where  and  how  they  were  going  to  live,  long 
before  they  had  decided  that  the  end  was  inevitable.  But 
when  Meredith  asked  Jacob  one  day  if  he  had  made  up  his 
mind  to  return  to  town,  he  replied  that  he  had  as  a  matter 
of  course,  and  never  stopped  to  wonder  just  when  and  how 
he  had  come  to  regard  the  arrangement  as  settled. 

By  the  end  of  February  they  were  taking  steps  to  find 
rooms  in  Bloomsbury,  a  task  in  which  Freda  had  promised 
to  collaborate.  Betty  wanted  to  be  independent  of  land- 
ladies and  attendance.  "Two  furnished  rooms  and  a  land- 
ing or  something,  with  a  gas-stove  that  I  could  cook  on," 
were  the  requirements  that  she  had  indicated  to  Freda,  with 


THE    COLLABORATORS  253 

the  stipulation  that  the  rent  must  not  be  more  than  eighteen 
shillings  a  week. 

Jacob  was  divided  between  his  joy  in  a  Cornish  spring 
and  the  increasing  longing  he  felt  for  some  undefined  excite- 
ment that  he  anticipated  in  the  return  to  London.  He  had 
been  away  from  it  now  for  seven  months,  and  although  he 
could  find  no  rational  explanation  for  his  desire,  he  was  con- 
scious that  London  was  calling  to  him  in  some  way.  Never- 
theless, he  was  unaware  of  the  strength  of  his  longing  until 
the  possibility  of  fulfilling  it  was  nearly  snatched  away  from 
him  by  the  last  "crisis"  that  was  ever  seriously  to  raise  his 
doubts  of  Betty's  happiness. 

That  crisis  was  brought  about  by  Freda's  report  of  a  pos- 
sible "upper-part"  for  them  in  a  house  in  Great  Ormond 
Street.  Jacob  saw  the  finger  of  fate  in  that  choice.  He  had 
had  rooms  in  Great  Ormond  Street  before  his  first  marriage, 
and  the  very  name  gave  him  a  sense  of  security. 

"I  don't  see  why  that  shouldn't  do,"  he  said  eagerly,  when 
Betty  had  read  the  letter  that  contained  Freda's  report. 

"We  can't  afford  twenty-two  shillings  a  week,"  Betty 
replied,  with  no  echo  of  enthusiasm  in  her  voice. 

"I  don't  believe  we  shall  get  anything  at  all  decent  for 
less,"  urged  Jacob ;  "and  it's  only  four  shillings  more  than 
we  thought." 

"Do  you  like  Great  Ormond  Street?"  asked  Betty,  leav- 
ing him  in  no  doubt  as  to  her  own  feelings  towards  it. 

"Yes,  I  do,"  he  said.  "It's  quiet,  for  one  thing.  You 
know  I  lived  there  for  years  when  I  was  in  an  office." 

"Yes,  I  think  you  told  me,"  Betty  said. 

"Don't  you  like  it?"  he  asked. 

"Not  much,"  she  said. 

Jacob  looked  perplexed.  "It's  all  very  well,"  he  explained, 
after  a  short  hesitation,  "but  you  say  the  rent's  too  much, 
and  you  don't  like  the  street;  but  if  you  want  to  live  in 
Woburn  Place,  or  somewhere  like  that,  we  should  have  to 
pay  more  than  double  that  price." 

"I  know  I'm  very  silly,"  Betty  said  quietly,  and  went 
quickly  out  of  the  room. 


254.  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

Jacob  stared  at  the  closed  door  in  blank  surprise.  His 
first  wife  had  constantly  found  fault  with  him,  and  had 
bred  in  him  the  habit  of  examining  his  own  past  conduct 
and  speech  in  order  to  discover  the  secret  offence — com- 
monly some  trivial  thing — which  had  provoked  the  outburst. 
He  reverted  to  that  habit  now,  wondering  what  he  had  done 
or  said  to  offend  Betty.  He  could  not  bear  to  feel  that 
there  should  be  any  misunderstanding  between  them ;  he  was 
willing  to  give  up  anything  rather  than  risk  that,  but  he  was 
quite  unable  to  realise  how  he  had  upset  her.  Surely  she 
did  not  think  that  he  would  insist  on  their  going  to  Great 
Ormond  Street  if  for  some  reason,  of  which  he  was  at 
present  ignorant,  she  had  any  objection  against  going  there. 

He  anxiously  weighed  the  problem  for  a  few  minutes,  and 
then  got  up  and  followed  Betty  into  the  kitchen. 

She  was  standing  at  the  table,  peeling  potatoes.  She 
looked  up  at  him  for  an  instant  when  he  came  in,  but  gave 
him  no  encouragement  to  speak. 

"Betty,  we  won't  go  to  Great  Ormond  Street  if  you  don't 
want  to,"  he  said,  in  a  note  of  expostulation  that  was  both 
plaintive  and  apologetic. 

"I  don't  mind,"  said  Betty,  very  intent  on  her  potatoes. 

"But  /  do,"  he  said.  "I  mind  very  much.  I  would  a 
thousand  times  sooner  stay  here  than  go  to  any  place  you 
didn't  like." 

Betty  dropped  the  last  potato  into  the  saucepan  and  gave 
it  a  little  shake.  "We  can't  stay  on  here  indefinitely,"  she 
said. 

"We  can,"  he  returned.  "Not  in  this  house,  perhaps — 
they  want  too  much  for  it  in  the  summer — but  there's  that 
little  cottage  at  Tregarrian — we  could  take  that." 

He  was  perfectly  conscious  that  he  was  not  making  a 
serious  suggestion ;  he  was  merely  leading  up  to  the  original 
proposal  by  what  he  deemed  a  harmless  introduction.  He 
was  prepared  for  her  instant  dismissal  of  the  Tregarrian 
cottage,  and  was  startled  when  she  said: 

"Do  you  think  you  would  like  that?" 

She  was  still  staring  into  the  saucepan,  giving  the  water 


THE    COLLABORATORS  255 

in  it  a  gentle  swirl,  and  apparently  absorbed  in  watching  the 
effect  of  that  operation.  And  suddenly  the  alternative  of 
staying  on  indefinitely  in  Cornwall  was  presented  to  Jacob  as 
a  serious  possibility.  Two  months  before  he  would  have 
welcomed  the  idea;  but  now,  as  the  prospect  of  leaving 
Cornwall  faded,  London  seemed  not  only  a  desirable,  but 
even  the  one  endurable  place  for  them  to  live  in.  He  visual- 
ised its  streets  and  squares  and  parks,  shining  with  the 
movement  of  human  life ;  he  saw  them  all  lit  with  the  ro- 
mance and  mystery  that  had  beautified  them  when  he  had 
first  adventured  into  that  unknown  magical  city.  The  very 
name  of  it  seemed  calling  to  him.  To  leave  London  for 
ever — London,  the  centre  of  the  world — was  to  acknowledge 
defeat. 

"Do  you  think  you  would  like  that?"  Betty  had  said. 

"I  shall  like  whatever  you  like,"  he  replied  magnificently. 

"You  weren't  so  anxious  to  go  back  a  month  ago,"  she 
said. 

"I  haven't  said  I'm  anxious  now,"  he  returned. 

"But  you  are,"  she  persisted. 

"I'm  not,"  he  said  carelessly. 

She  had  been  scrutinising  his  face  as  she  spoke,  but  she 
returned  again  now  to  rocking  her  potatoes. 

"I  don't  mind  Great  Ormond  Street,"  she  said  in  a  low 
voice. 

"What  have  you  got  against  it?"  he  asked,  trying  to  be 
very  reasonable. 

"Nothing,"  she  said. 

"But  you  must  have  had  something;  you  distinctly  said 
you  didn't  like  it." 

"Did  I?    I  didn't  mean  those  rooms  particularly." 

"Betty,  don't  you  want  to  go  back  at  all?" 

"I  don't  know." 

"I  wish  you'd  leave  your  old  potatoes  alone  and  talk  to 
me,"  he  said.  "You  must  see  that  I'm  ready  to  do  anything 
you  want  to  do,  if  you'll  only  tell  me  what  you  do  want." 

"They've  got  to  be  boiled,"  returned  Betty,  ignoring  his 
plea  for  a  plain  statement  of  her  wishes. 


256  THE   'INVISIBLE    EVENT 

Jacob  moved  aside  for  her  to  come  to  the  range,  but  when 
she  had  put  down  the  saucepan,  he  held  out  his  arms  to  her. 
"Do  tell  me  what  you  want  to  do,  darling,"  he  pleaded. 

"I  want  to  do  what's  best  for  you,"  she  said ;  but  she  did 
not  meet  his  proffered  embrace. 

"You  can  only  do  that  by  doing  what  will  make  you  most 
happy,"  was  his  reply. 

"You  mfght  not  think  so  in  six  months'  time  if  we  stayed 
down  here,"  Betty  said. 

"Oh,  is  that  it  ?"  he  said,  smiling,  and  went  on :  "But  you 
want  to  stay  here,  then.  You  only  go  back  to  town  to  please 
me.  Is  it  because  you  like  this  place,  or  is  it  because  you're 
afraid  to  meet  people?" 

"I  should  like  to  go  back  if  it  weren't  for  that,"  she  ad- 
mitted at  last. 

"Are  you  still  worrying?"  he  asked. 

She  shook  her  head. 

"Meaning  'yes,' "  Jacob  said. 

"Not  worrying,"  was  her  evasion. 

Jacob  sat  down  on  the  edge  of  the  kitchen  table.  The 
objection  to  leaving  Cornwall  was  presented  now  in  another 
aspect;  the  whole  question  needed  reconsideration. 

"You  know,  dear,  it's  no  use  quibbling  about  this,"  he 
said,  after  a  short  pause.  "If  you  really  want  to  stay  here, 
I'll  stay  with  joy.  But  if  you  want  in  your  heart  to  go  back 
to  town,  and  simply  funk  it  because  you're  afraid  of  meeting 
someone  you  know,  well,  I  think  we  ought  to  go  back. 
You'll  have  to  get  over  that  sooner  or  later,  won't  you  ?" 

"I  do  try  not  to  be  silly,  but  I  can't  help  it  sometimes," 
was  Betty's  rather  pathetic  admission. 

"If  you  admit  that  it's  silly  .  .  ."  he  began. 

"There's  no  doubt  that  you  want  to  go,  anyway,"  she 
interrupted  him. 

"Must  we  put  it  on  those  grounds  ?"  he  asked ;  and  Betty, 
while  she  wondered  how  he  could  be  so  blind,  made  no  effort 
to  enlighten  him. 

"We'll  take  the  Great  Ormond  Street  rooms,"  she  said 
definitely. 


THE    COLLABORATORS  257 

"Not  if  you  don't  want  to,"  he  persisted  as  a  final  justifi- 
cation. 

"I  shall  be  all  right  when  I'm  there,"  she  assured  him. 
And  he  honestly  believed  that  it  would  be  better  for  her  to 
give  way  on  that  point. 

But  to  Betty  the  thought  of  London  was  curiously  per- 
turbing. It  was  filled  for  her  with  all  the  associations  of 
another  life  that  she  had  left  behind  her  when  she  came  to 
Cornwall.  Her  dread  was  not  only  of  meeting  some  chance 
acquaintance  in  the  street,  but  also  of  herself.  She  felt  that 
she  would  have  to  fight  her  trouble  all  over  again  in  those 
familiar  surroundings.  Here,  she  had  never  been  other  than 
she  was  now;  there,  she  would  be  continually  confronted 
with  the  difference,  not  fully  justified  to  herself  as  yet,  in 
her  mode  of  thought  and  of  life.  The  London  she  saw  in 
imagination  sat  in  judgment  upon  her. 

"If  you're  miserable  there,  we'll  come  back  at  once," 
Jacob  said. 

"Very  well,"  she  agreed,  and  then  added  suddenly: 
"Goodness,  what  a  fool  I  am!" 

Jacob  looked  startled.    "Do  you  mean  .  .  ."  he  began. 

"I  wish  you  wouldn't  interrupt  me  when  I'm  cooking," 
Betty  said  sharply.  "I've  forgotten  to  put  any  salt  in  the 
potatoes,  that's  all.  And  how  much  work  have  you  done 
this  morning,  I'd  like  to  know?" 

"Oh,  I'm  getting  on,"  said  Jacob,  smiling. 


Jacob  went  down  alone  to  Livelow  in  the  evening  of  his 
last  day  in  Cornwall.  He  had  wanted  Betty  to  come  with 
him,  but  she  was  still  so  busy  helping  Millie  to  clean  up  the 
house  that  at  last  she  had  besought  him  to  go  without  her. 

"I  can't  see  why  you  should  take  all  this  trouble  about 
the  house,"  he  said  petulantly.  "I  don't  suppose  it  was  so 
marvellously  clean  when  I  came  into  it." 

"I  must  leave  it  decent,"  Betty  had  replied,  with  a  slight 


258  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

frown  and  a  set  of  the  lips,  signifying,  as  he  had  now  come 
to  know,  that  her  determination  was  unshakable. 

He  had  left  her  putting  clean  newspapers  on  all  the  larder 
shelves. 

So  he  went  alone,  harbouring  a  faint  anxiety  lest  she 
should  be  dreading  the  next  day's  journey,  and  be  trying 
to  smother  her  depression  in  housework.  But  when  he  came 
to  Livelow  he  lost  all  thought  of  doubt  or  fear. 

The  tide  was  high,  and  although  the  sea  never  left  the 
face  of  the  cliff  at  that  point,  deep  water  was  needed  to 
carry  those  great  rollers  unbroken  to  the  shore,  to  bear 
them  up  as  they  were  borne  now,  so  great  and  so  far  apart 
that  the  receding  hollow  of  the  stupendous  trough  seemed 
as  if  it  must  finally  fail  and  expose  the  hidden  floor  of  rock. 

Jacob  caught  a  glimpse  of  it  all  as  he  made  his  way  down 
the  valley,  and  hurried  eagerly,  loth  to  lose  one  moment's 
contemplation  of  that  glorious  invading.  And  when  he  came 
to  the  vantage  of  that  rock  which  gave  him  such  full  and 
near  sight  of  the  splendid  turmoil,  while  lifting  him  just 
beyond  range  of  those  fierce  jets  of  exploding  spray,  he  held 
his  breath  for  an  instant,  as  if  he  would  concentrate  every 
ability  of  his  body  on  the  reception  of  this  vast,  wonderful 
impression.  .  .  . 

For  a  time  he  was  stunned  by  the  enormous  force  and 
depth  of  that  processional,  inrushing  assault  upon  the  rock 
face.  He  sat  rigidly  attentive,  murmuring  now  and  again  a 
feeble  expletive  of  astonishment  when  some  still  greater 
wave  rolled  towering  to  overleap  the  retreating  swell  of 
its  predecessors,  and  break  with  enormous  thunder  that 
shook  the  stubborn  basalt  of  the  awful  cliff. 

But  presently  his  thought  began  to  emerge  in  an  effort- 
less, unconscious  process — thought  that  seemed  to  have  a 
greater  intensity  and  reality  than  life  itself. 

He  saw  himself  as  he  had  sat  on  that  same  rock  four 
years  before,  going  back  then,  as  now,  to  take  up  with  an 
eager  heart  the  burden  of  living.  And  he  condescended 
with  an  effect  of  rapture  to  the  contemplation  of  the  change 
in  his  circumstance  that  those  four  years  had  wrought. 


THE    COLLABORATORS  259 

Little  enough  it  might  seem  to  one  who  judged  him  un- 
emotionally; but  to  himself  the  change  was  immense  be- 
yond computation.  His  potentiality  had  been  changed.  Al- 
ways he  had  had  the  desire  to  express  himself  by  writing — 
the  material  had  been  there  in  his  mind,  even  on  occasion 
the  words  of  its  translation  into  language,  but  he  had  been 
too  weak  to  persevere.  The  task  was  so  long,  the  result  so 
unsure.  Sometimes  he  had  almost  pleased  himself,  but  far 
more  often  he  had  judged  his  expression  a  failure,  so  inade- 
quate was  the  rendering,  so  fine  had  seemed  the  conception 
in  the  warmly  coloured  light  of  his  imagination. 

Now  new  possibilities  were  open  before  him.  He  had 
done  little,  but  he  had  reached  out  a  hand  to  grasp  some 
accomplishment,  however  slight.  For  more  than  a  month 
his  imagination  had  been  excited  by  the  thought  of  entering 
the  literary  life  of  London.  It  had  presented  itself  to  him 
romantically  as  an  intriguing,  delightful  thing.  Meredith's 
stories  had  given  him  material,  and  Jacob  had  pictured 
himself  as  being  received  into  that  circle  which,  because  it 
was  altogether  strange  to  him,  was  ideally  conceived.  He 
looked  forward  with  trembling  excitement  to  the  romance 
that  must  change  to  realism  as  he  entered  it.  And  the 
thought  of  it  had  stirred  in  him  a  great  desire  for  London, 
and  stirred  him  now  to  create  in  his  mind  a  glorious  future. 

For  it  was  no  longer  an  impossible  thing  that  he  dreamed. 
Alone,  urged  by  a  desire  that  stimulated  his  mind  and  left 
him  physically  inert,  he  was  incapable  of  achievement.  But 
the  coming  of  Betty  had  changed  all  that.  She  believed 
in  him ;  she  gave  him  courage  and  strength  and  clearness. 
She  was  the  immediate  object  of  all  his  ambitions.  It  was 
for  her  now  that  he  wrote  every  word  of  his  novel ;  and  in 
interesting  her,  in  making  his  daily  effort  to  please  her  and 
win  her  admiration,  he  was  creating  little  by  little  the  thing 
that  would,  he  hoped,  presently  be  the  means  of  his  old 
ambition. 

Yet  his  love  for  her  was  not  wholly  selfish.  She  had  be- 
come necessary  to  him ;  he  could  not  picture  a  future  for 
himself  in  which  she  had  no  part,  and  his  thought  of  that 


260  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

future  was  full  of  his  own  glorious  attainment.  But  he 
would  have  given  up  his  ambitions  without  hesitation,  if 
the  choice  of  renunciation  had  lain  between  them  and  her. 
Although  he  might  wish  splendidly  to  succeed,  he  had  no 
wish  to  succeed  alone.  .  .  . 

The  sun  was  setting,  and  the  roaring  assault  of  the  sea 
was  changing  its  note  as  the  tide  receded — the  big  rollers 
were  breaking  before  they  reached  the  cliff,  and  the  im- 
mense impact  had  given  place  to  a  seething  tumult  of  heav- 
ing foam. 

XI 

Jacob  rose,  suddenly  conscious  that  he  was  chilled  and 
stiff,  and  turned  his  back  on  the  unending  conflict  of  the 
waters.  And  then  he  saw  Betty  coming  down  the  valley  to 
join  him,  the  last  glow  of  sunset  on  her  face. 

As  she  came  nearer  he  could  see  that  she  was  anxiously 
looking  for  him,  and  he  began  to  climb  down  from  his  eyrie 
and  to  shout  her  name  against  the  shouting  of  the  immense 
sea. 

"I  was  afraid,"  she  said,  as  she  came  up  to  him.  "I 
didn't  think  you  would  be  so  long.  I  thought  you  might 
have  fallen  over  the  cliff." 

"The  sea  has  been  so  magnificent,"  he  explained;  but  in 
his  heart  he  thought  that  her  care  for  him  was  a  still  more 
wonderful  thing. 


BOOK  V 
ACHIEVEMENT 


XIII 

VARIOUS   ENCOUNTERS 


THE  three  rooms  in  Great  Ormond  Street  were  en  suite, 
and  the  farthest  of  them  could  only  be  entered  from 
the  bedroom.  This  ultimate  apartment  was  evidently  a 
comparatively  recent  addition  to  an  old  house ;  it  was  two 
steps  down  from  the  level  of  the  rest  of  the  floor,  and 
the  door  into  it  was  so  squeezed  into  the  corner  that  there 
had  been  no  space  for  the  architrave  against  the  right-hand 
wall  of  the  bedroom  and  the  opposite  wall  in  the  smaller 
room,  which  was  instantly  called  the  "kitchen"  by  Betty. 
And  it  did,  indeed,  contain  a  small  gas-stove,  and  a  sink 
with  a  cold-water  tap  under  the  window. 

Jacob  thought  it  would  do  very  well.  He  had  been  inter- 
ested in  the  passage  hall  and  staircase  from  the  moment  of 
his  entrance — the  former  panelled  in  some  wood  that  could 
not  be  distinguished  under  its  covering  of  dull  brown  paint, 
and  the  latter  a  specimen  worthy  of  being  included  in  the 
Council's  Survey  of  London — not  even  contemplated  at  that 
date — a  staircase  with  solid  square  newels  that  ran  up  from 
floor  to  floor,  with  short,  thickset  little  balusters,  and  broad, 
heavy  handrails  and  strings. 

"This  house  must  have  been  built  in  the  reign  of  James 
II.  at  latest,"  Jacob  announced  with  enthusiasm;  and  when 
he  looked  out  of  one  of  the  two  tall  windows  in  their  sitting- 
room,  and  found  that  he  could  see  the  doorway  of  the 
Working  Men's  Club  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  street,  he 
had  another  moment  of  jubilation. 

"I  lived  here  all  those  years,"  he  explained  to  Betty,  "and 
never  knew  that  place  had  any  particular  associations.  I 


THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

was  on  the  other  side  then,  lower  down;  you  can't  see  the 
house  from  here.  That  club,  you  know,  was  started  by  the 
Christian  Socialists — Charles  Kingsley  and  Maurice,  and  all 
that  lot.  I  was  frightfully  ignorant  about  everything  in 
those  days,"  he  added  reflectively. 

Betty  did  not  appear  to  be  greatly  interested  in  their  asso- 
ciations with  James  II.  and  Charles  Kingsley.  She  was 
looking  at  the  furniture,  examining  the  inevitable  lace  cur- 
tains, the  antimacassars,  the  imitation  saddle-bag  suite,  the 
meaningless  ornaments  that  crowded  the  mantelpiece,  the 
marble  top  of  the  sideboard,  and  even  the  twisty-legged 
little  chess-table  that  hid  the  warped  and  split  deficiencies 
of  its  inlaid  squares  under  crimson  woolly  mats. 

"She  seems  clean,"  she  remarked  at  last,  in  the  middle  of 
a  brief  exposition  of  the  Christian-Socialist  movement. 

Jacob  stopped  abruptly,  flushed  a  little,  and  then  laughed. 

"You're  like  a  cat  in  a  strange  house,"  he  said.  "What 
does  it  matter?" 

Betty  gave  a  little  shiver.  "I  couldn't  live  in  dirty 
rooms,"  she  said. 

"Oh  no,  of  course  not,"  returned  Jacob  mechanically,  and 
went  on  more  briskly:  "I  think  it's  rather  jolly,  though, 
here,  don't  you  ?  I  like  it." 

"Yes — oh  yes — so  do  I,"  Betty  said,  with  determination. 
"Freda  would  have  been  sure  to  see  that  everything  was 
clean.  She's  coming  round  after  dinner." 

"I  know,"  assented  Jacob.  The  first  glow  of  his  excite- 
ment had  been  quenched,  but  he  was  ready  to  forsake  the 
view  of  the  street  to  help  Betty  to  unpack,  and  to  enter  into 
a  consideration  of  how  the  rooms  might  be  improved. 

"I  suppose  she  won't  mind  taking  away  some  of  those 
ornaments  and  pictures,"  he  said  hesitatingly,  in  response 
to  a  suggestion  of  Betty's. 

"Can't  help  it  if  she  does,"  replied  Betty  shortly. 

"We  shan't  be  dependent  on  her  for  anything,"  he  re- 
flected, and  added :  "I  suppose  men  are  dreadful  cowards 
in  things  like  that." 

"You're  so  helpless,"  was  Betty's  comment. 


ACHIEVEMENT  265 

The  "she"  to  whom  they  referred  as  a  matter  of  course — 
known  more  definitely  as  Mrs.  Coulson — was  a  dark  woman 
of  fifty  or  so,  who  wore  spectacles,  and  was  chiefly  remark- 
able for  a  dark  brown  mole,  the  size  of  a  florin,  on  her  left 
cheek. 

Betty  had  faced  her  in  the  first  instance  with  a  slight 
tremor  of  misgiving  that  she  had  not  confessed  to  Jacob. 
But  Mrs.  Coulson,  after  a  brief  professional  scrutiny,  had 
evidenced  a  complete  lack  of  any  curiosity,  even  of  interest. 
She  had  shown  them  the  rooms,  and  answered  Betty's  ques- 
tions with  mechanical  rapidity,  and  the  only  irrelevant  re- 
mark that  she  had  offered  was  made  at  the  last  moment, 
when  she  had  paused,  looked  at  Betty,  and  said  with  some- 
thing of  defiance:  "I've  got  a  small  dressmaking  business 
downstairs,  if  you  want  anything  done." 

"Rather  a  queer  stick,"  had  been  Jacob's  summary  of 
Mrs.  Coulson;  but  he  found  her  slightly  intimidating,  and 
was  anxious  to  postpone  the  delicate  refusal  of  her  orna- 
ments and  pictures  until  next  morning. 

Betty,  now  that  she  was  satisfied — and  in  some  mysteri- 
ous way  she  had  satisfied  herself — that  her  respectability 
was  accepted  without  the  least  shadow  of  suspicion,  suf- 
fered no  such  qualms  with  regard  to  the  removal  of  the 
offending  objects  of  decoration. 

"We  may  as  well  get  it  done  at  once,"  she  said,  and  pro- 
ceeded, despite  the  feeble  protests  of  Jacob,  to  pile  a  very 
liberal  collection  of  ornaments  and  pictures  on  the  sitting- 
room  table. 

"She  won't  like  those  bally  birds  being  taken  down,  I 
know — they  take  up  so  much  room,"  was  Jacob's  final  ob- 
jection, when  Betty,  by  way  of  crowning  her  work,  removed 
five  humming-birds,  moulting  under  a  large  glass  bell,  from 
the  mantelpiece. 

"It's  the  worst  of  the  lot,"  replied  Betty. 

"Oh,  I  know  it  is,"  agreed  Jacob — but  he  looked  very 
uneasy  when  she  rang  the  bell. 

There  was  an  interval  before  Mrs.  Coulson  appeared  and 
she  brought  with  her  a  small  can  of  milk.  She  paused  at 


266  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

the  door,  looked  at  the  table,  and  then  set  the  can  down 
on  the  marble  slab  of  the  denuded  sideboard. 

"Oh,  Mrs.  Coulson,  I  wonder  if  you  would  mind  .  .  ." 
Betty  began,  but  the  landlady,  still  apparently  somewhat 
pressed  for  time,  cut  her  short. 

"I'll  send  my  niece  up  with  a  tray,"  she  said  decisively, 
and  then,  as  if  she  felt  that  some  comment  was  needed,  she 
added :  "Some  likes  'em,  and  some  don't ;  I  must  find  a 
place  for  'em  somewhere,  I  suppose."  She  did  not  wait  to 
hear  Jacob's  polite  and  somewhat  effusive  expression  of 
gratitude. 

When  she  had  gone,  he  repeated  his  opinion  that  she  was 
a  queer  stick. 

"I  think  she  seems  a  nice  woman,"  Betty  said. 

"And  you  are  going  to  like  it  here,  aren't  you?"  he  said, 
with  a  sudden  fervour. 

"It  certainly  looks  a  little  better  now  those  awful  things 
have  gone,"  she  replied. 

"But  it  isn't  so  bad,  is  it?"  he  persisted.  "You  will  be 
happy  here." 

"If  you  are,"  she  said. 

"I  can  be  happy  anywhere  with  you,"  he  affirmed  earn- 
estly, and  added :  "We'll  go  back  to  Cornwall,  if  you 
like." 

Betty  smiled  and  went  over  to  him.  "You're  quite,  quite 
certain,  aren't  you,  that  you're  not  getting  tired  of  me?" 
she  asked. 

"Oh,  my  dear!"  was  Jacob's  contented  response — and  a 
minute  later  he  laughed  happily  at  the  thought  of  what  his 
life  would  have  been  without  her. 


II 

He  thought  Freda's  manner  towards  himself  a  little 
formal,  even  chilling,  when  she  came  to  see  them  that  eve- 
ning. 

He  remembered  her  as  a  very  young  woman  who  had 
momentarily  attracted  him,  and  might  have  attracted  him 


ACHIEVEMENT  267 

still  more  definitely,  had  he  not  been  living  under  Mr.  Bar- 
ker's influence,  and  striving  towards  some  remote  ideal  of 
selflessness  that,  in  those  surroundings,  had  appeared  the 
perfect  way  of  life. 

He  wanted  now  to  discuss  that  experience  with  her.  She 
had  had  strength  to  flout  Barker's  teaching,  if  she  had  for  a 
time  felt  the  strange  influence  of  his  personality — she  with 
her  defiant  love-affair  that  had  gradually  given  place  to 
another  quite  as  desperate,  and,  from  Barker's  point  of 
view,  quite  as  reprehensible.  And  Jacob,  looking  back  and 
finding  an  atmosphere  of  romance  and  beauty  in  that  sojourn 
in  Camden  Town,  was  eager  to  revive  his  associations  with 
the  place.  He  had  made  up  his  mind  about  the  central 
figure  of  that  episode  in  his  life,  and  he  anticipated  pleasure 
in  stating  his  opinions  and  in  comparing  them  with  those 
of  one  who  had  certainly  seen  more  clearly  than  himself 
at  the  time.  He  and  she  had  something  in  common,  he 
thought,  and  there  had  been  one  morning  in  Camden  Town 
when  they  had  begun  to  understand  one  another.  If  it  had 
not  been  for  the  intrusion  of  Philip  Laurence,  that  under- 
standing might  have  increased. 

But  Freda  seemed  to  take  ^o  interest  in  that  fascinating 
epic  of  Cecil  Barker.  It  was  some  time  before  Jacob  could 
decently  introduce  it,  and  when  he  found  an  opening  at 
last,  she  eluded  him  with  all  the  ease  of  a  woman  who  can 
instantly  divert  the  flow  of  her  conversation  into  any  channel 
she  pleases.  Jacob,  directly  confronted  'with  a  question 
he  did  not  wish  to  discuss,  would  have  been  clumsy  and 
embarrassed.  Freda  slid  away  from  his  inquiry  as  to 
whether  she  remembered  "all  that  business  in  Acacia  Ave- 
nue" with  an  ease  that  left  him  uncertain  if  her  evasion 
were  intentional.  Not  until  he  had  deliberately  broached 
the  subject  for  the  third  time  did  he  realise  that  she  was 
equally  deliberately  avoiding  it. 

He  was  disappointed  in  her.  He  had  not  anticipated  any 
unusual  pleasure  from  her  visit,  but  he  had  felt  that  she 
was  an  ally,  that  she  would  take  up  her  old  relationship 
with  him,  and  help  him  to  strengthen  Betty  in  her  young 


268  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

attitude  towards  the  convention  of  marriage.  Instead  of 
that  she  had,  he  considered,  treated  him  with  a  faint  suspi- 
cion, and  certainly  with  aloofness.  It  seemed  that  Betty 
was  her  older  friend,  not  himself,  and  he  had  the  feeling 
that  he  was  intruding  upon  their  confidences.  Indeed,  be- 
fore the  evening  was  over,  they  adjourned  to  the  bedroom 
on  some  excuse  connected  with  Betty's  wardrobe,  which 
undoubtedly  needed  replenishing,  and  stayed  there  talking 
— he  could  hear  their  voices,  although  he  could  not  dis- 
tinguish their  actual  words — for  nearly  three-quarters  of 
an  hour. 

He  grew  restless  and  impatient  after  a  time,  and  he  was 
on  the  point  of  calling  to  Betty  when  they  returned  to  the 
sitting-room. 

"You  don't  mean  to  say  that  you've  been  talking  chiffons 
for  a  whole  hour?"  he  asked,  with  a  suggestion  of  petu- 
lance. 

"Have  we  really  been  as  long  as  that?"  returned  Betty, 
with  a  glance  at  the  marble  gilt-faced  clock  she  had  per- 
mitted to  remain  on  the  mantelpiece — a  clock  that  had  de- 
cided for  itself  many  years  before  that  the  ideal  time  for 
everything  was  twenty  minutes  past  three. 

"Pretty  nearly,"  persisted  Jacob — but  he  received  no  an- 
swer to  his  question.  Betty,  also,  was  gifted  with  a  capacity 
for  elusiveness  on  occasion. 

But  when  Freda  had  gone  he  received  a  report  of  that 
long  conversation  in  the  bedroom. 

"I'm  afraid  Mrs.  Parmenter's  dying,"  Betty  said.  "Freda 
says  she's  getting  feebler  every  day;  and  she  wants  to  see 
me." 

"Does  she?"  ejaculated  Jacob.  He  was  surprised;  he 
had  pictured  a  certain  vindictiveness  towards  Betty  in  Mrs. 
Parmenter's  mind.  "You'll  go,  I  suppose?"  he  added. 

"Of  course,"  Betty  said.  "I  feel  in  a  way  that  I'm 
partly  responsible  for  her." 

"Not  for  her  illness,"  Jacob  put  in. 

"A  little,"  Betty  acknowledged.  "It  was  a  shock  to  her 
when  I  ran  away  like  that.  I  was  a  coward.  I  was  afraid 


ACHIEVEMENT  269 

if  I  told  her  I  was  going,  that  she  would  wire  to  father." 

"Probably  would  have,"  commented  Jacob. 

Betty  passed  that  by.  "Anyway,  she  wants  to  see  me," 
she  said. 

"Do  you  suppose  she'll  try  to  persuade  you  to  leave  me 
and  turn  to  the  path  of  righteousness?"  Jacob  asked  bitterly. 

"It  wouldn't  make  any  difference  if  she  did." 

"I  hope  not ;  but  it  might  upset  you  again."  Jacob  paused 
a  moment,  and  then  said:  "Betty,  I'd  sooner  you  didn't 
go." 

"I  must,"  she  said,  with  that  determined  air  that  had 
never  yet  failed  to  overcome  him. 

"But  why?"  he  asked  plaintively. 

"I've  told  you,  I  feel  responsible  for  her." 

"I  suppose  I  couldn't  come  too?" 

"I  don't  think  she  wants  to  see  you." 

"Probably  not;  but  why  don't  you  think  so?" 

"She  asked  Freda  not  to  say  anything  before  you.  That 
was  why  we  went  into  the  other  room." 

Jacob  hesitated,  wondering  how  that  arrangement  had 
been  planned  under  his  eyes  and  in  his  hearing  without  his 
knowledge.  His  feeling  that  he  had  in  a  sense  been  in- 
truding, had  been  a  true  one,  he  reflected.  He  took  a  turn 
up  the  room,  paused  by  the  chess-table,  and  attempted  to 
flatten  down  one  of  the  warped  squares  of  its  inlay. 

"I  don't  like  it,"  he  said  after  a  pause. 

"I  think  you're  being  rather  silly,"  remarked  Betty. 

"Perhaps  I  am,"  he  returned;  "but  I  don't  want  you  to 
go  there  and  have  all  your  conscientious  scruples  revived 
again.  It  will  only  make  you  miserable — indirectly  me,  of 
course — and  it  can't  do  Mrs.  Parmenter  any  good."  He 
stopped  himself  on  the  point  of  calling  her  "old  Parmenter," 
in  his  usual  manner,  influenced  less  by  respect  for  her  re- 
ported condition  than  by  his  wish  to  conciliate  Betty. 

"Darling,  I  must  go,"  Betty  said  quietly.  "I  came  to 
you  when  you  wanted  me,"  she  added. 

"Was  that  an  act  of  utter  self-sacrifice  too?"  he  asked, 
resentfully. 


270  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

She  met  his  glance  and  smiled.  All  the  means  to  convince 
him  was  in  her  mind,  but  she  could  not  sift  her  thought  into 
logical  phrase.  "Would  you  like  me  to  refuse,"  she  said, 
"when  she's  so  ill,  just  because  you're  afraid  that  it  will  be 
a  bother?" 

"Does  it  come  to  that?"  He  defended  himself  vaguely, 
conscious  that  his  case  would  not  bear  analysis. 

"You're  not  afraid  that  I  shall  go  off  and  leave  you?" 
asked  Betty. 

"I  don't  want  you  to  be  worried — now,  directly  you've 
come  back  to  London."  He  realised  that  he  was  routed,  but 
he  wanted  to  justify  the  resistance  he  had  made. 

"It  would  worry  me  much  more  if  I  didn't  go,"  Betty 
replied. 

Jacob  went  to  her  and  kissed  her.  "I'm  jealous  of  every- 
one," he  said.  "I  don't  want  you  to  sacrifice  yourself  for 
anyone  but  me.  I  was  jealous  of  Freda  to-night.  Do  you 
like  her  much?" 

"Yes,  very  much;  don't  you?" 

"I  don't  know,"  Jacob  confessed.  "She  has  altered  so. 
She  looks  ten  years  older  than  she  did  three  years  ago — 
and  she  is.  Why  do  you  suppose  she  snubbed  me  about 
Barker  and  Camden  Town  ?" 

"I  didn't  know  she  did.    I  didn't  notice  it." 

"Refused  to  talk  about  it,  anyway." 

"She  isn't  very  anxious  to  remember  that  part  of  her 
life,  I  think,"  Betty  said.  "She  has  never  told  me  much 
about  it." 

"I  wonder  why,"  commented  Jacob. 

"Probably  because  it  has  unpleasant  memories,"  Betty 
suggested.  "You  never  like  talking  about  your  first  wife." 

Jacob  winced.    "I  certainly  don't,"  he  said  with  emphasis. 

"Well,  why  shouldn't  Freda  want  to  forget  things  too?" 

"I'm  rather  an  ass,"  Jacob  admitted.  .  .  . 

Before  they  went  to  bed  Betty  suddenly  put  her  arms 
round  him  and  said :  "We  couldn't  ever  quarrel,  could 
we?" 


ACHIEVEMENT  271 

"It   seems   absolutely   unthinkable,   doesn't  it?"   he   re- 
sponded. 
"Don't  say  it  seems — say  it  is,"  she  corrected  him. 


111 

Jacob  awaited  Betty's  return  next  day  with  considerable 
uneasiness.  She  had  gone  out  at  eleven  o'clock — the  morn- 
ing, it  seemed,  was  Mrs.  Parmenter's  best  time — and  had  set 
him  down  to  work  at  the  decently  steady  table  in  the  sitting- 
room.  But,  although  he  had  already  lost  two  days  that 
week — Thursday,  in  wandering  about  while  Betty  packed, 
and  yesterday  in  the  journey — he  felt  no  inclination  what- 
ever to  concentrate  his  attention  on  the  reviews  that  ought 
to  be  finished  by  Sunday  night. 

By  way  of  preparation  he  wrote  to  the  manager  of  the 
Daily  Post,  and  also  to  its  editor,  notifying  them  of  his  re- 
turn to  town,  and  sending  to  the  latter  the  usual  tentative 
indication  of  books  he  would  like  to  review,  chosen  from 
the  list  of  "Books  Received"  during  the  week.  When  the 
letters  were  written,  Jacob  went  out  and  posted  them.  And 
as,  when  he  had  first  gone  to  Cornwall,  he  had  felt  a  strong 
sense  of  pleasure,  even  of  exaltation,  in  his  thought  of 
Trevarrian's  loneliness  and  isolation,  so  now  he  revelled 
in  the  recovered  facilities  of  town  life,  in  the  thought  of 
its  shops  and  its  services,  its  means  of  communication,  and 
the  vitality  of  its  streets.  He  went  up  into  Queen  Square 
and  studied  the  houses  on  its  south  side  for  a  time,  deciding 
that  there  was  a  good  deal  to  be  said  for  the  beauty  of  Eng- 
lish Renaissance  architecture  of  that  period. 

As  he  walked  back  he  began  mentally  to  phrase  an  essay 
on  the  awful  influences  of  the  House  of  Hanover  on  English 
Art.  Only  the  fact  that  he  had  allowed  his  reader's  ticket 
to  lapse,  deterred  him  from  visiting  the  British  Museum 
in  order  to  look  up  a  few  references  to  Horace  Walpole 
and  the  indecencies  of  the  Gothic  revival. 

When  he  was  back  again  in  their  new  rooms,  he  spent 
twenty-five  minutes  in  searching  for  that  lapsed  ticket ;  and 


272  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

when  he  had  found  it  at  last  in  the  inside  pocket  of  an  old 
jacket,  he  discovered  that  the  time  was  nearly  twelve  o'clock, 
and  that  Betty  might  be  home  at  any  moment. 

He  sat  down  resolutely  then  to  his  review,  without  ever 
pausing  to  address  the  recovered  ticket  to  the  Director  of 
the  Museum;  but  after  he  had  written  the  title,  publisher, 
and  price  of  the  book  at  the  head  of  a  sheet  of  foolscap,  he 
was  utterly  floored  to  find  an  opening  sentence. 

His  thoughts  were  diverted  by  the  anticipation  of  Betty's 
return,  and  the  more  he  reflected  on  the  object  of  her  visit 
to  Montague  Place,  the  uneasier  he  became.  She  was  still  so 
pliable — so  apt,  he  imagined,  to  revert  to  her  earlier  modes 
of  thought.  And  if  the  old  associations  of  the  boarding- 
house  were  added  to  the  influence  and  possible  preaching 
of  Mrs.  Parmenter,  Betty  might  have  a  tremendous  reac- 
tion; she  might  suddenly  decide  that  she  could  not  go  on 
living  with  him,  or,  at  the  best,  suffer  another  period  of 
doubt  and  depression. 

He  pushed  his  notes  and  writing-paper  from  him  with  a 
spurt  of  anger.  It  came  to  him  that  he  had  been  a  fool  to 
leave  Cornwall.  He  knew  that  it  was  solely  his  own  desires 
that  had  prevailed  in  making  that  decision  to  come  to  Great 
Ormond  Street.  He  had  been  lusting  for  a  change  of  scene, 
for  the  excitements  of  London,  and,  above  all,  he  had  been 
conscious  of  a  feeling  of  expectation,  of  awaiting  some 
success  that  would  come  to  him  when  he  came  back  to  the 
centre  of  things. 

But  all  these  desires  and  hopes  of  his  were  inextricably 
involved  with  his  love  for  Betty.  He  might  lose  something 
of  his  joy  in  life  if  it  were  necessary  for  them  to  live 
year  in,  year  out,  at  Trevarrian ;  but  he  would  lose  infinitely 
more  if  she  left  him  now — if  he  were  once  more  alone,  fac- 
ing his  wretched  instabilities  and  inefficiencies.  He  real- 
ised it  all  so  clearly  and  so  truly.  She  was  so  much  more 
than  a  mere  support  to  him. 

In  his  boyhood  his  Aunt  Hester  had  given  him  the  same 
kind  of  love,  encouragement,  and  help.  Without  her  he 
would  still  have  been  a  helpless,  physical  cripple,  because 


ACHIEVEMENT  273 

he  had  never  had  the  strength  of  purpose  to  persist  in  the 
simple  and  yet  tiringly  monotonous  exercises  that  had 
brought  about  his  cure.  And  now  Betty  had  come  to  him 
to  help  him  in  overcoming  his  spiritual  malady.  The  anal- 
ogy was  absolute ;  indeed,  it  was  not  an  analogy  so  far  as  his 
own  weakness  was  concerned,  but  a  repetition  of  the  same 
process.  He  wanted  love  and  the  inspiration  of  being  loved. 
He  wanted  someone  to  believe  in  him,  and  constantly  to 
revive  his  feeble  faith  in  his  own  abilities.  He  would  not 
be  driven,  and  yet  he  needed  and  longed  for  the  definite 
guiding  power  of  some  control. 

And  Betty  had  come,  miraculously,  to  fulfil  his  every  need. 
To  lose  her  now  would  be  to  lose  hope.  He  could  not  face 
the  future  alone.  The  very  thought  of  it  induced  that  old 
sense  of  inertia,  of  doubt  in  himself,  of  the  futility  of  any 
effort  he  could  force  himself  to  make.  But  only  the  thought 
of  his  work,  of  long-sustained  toil  ...  he  was  ready  to 
make  big  effort  at  once  to  hold  Betty  to  him.  He  was 
willing  to  suffer,  to  face  her  father  and  all  her  relations, 
to  be  stubborn  and  resourceful,  to  take  any  pains  or  meet 
any  contempt,  rather  than  permit  her  to  leave  him. 

Nevertheless,  when  she  came  home,  his  first  speech  to  her 
exhibited  no  sign  of  the  strength  of  his  resolves. 


IV 

"Well?"  he  said.  "Has  she  persuaded  you  that  you're 
very  wicked  ?" 

Betty  frowned.  "You  aren't  fair  to  her,"  she  said.  "You 
don't  understand  her  in  the  least." 

"Well,  what  did  she  say?"  asked  Jacob. 

"Heaps  of  things.  I  must  get  the  lunch  now,"  said  Betty. 
"It  must  be  nearly  one.  I  stayed  talking  to  Freda." 

"But  it's  all  right?"  he  asked  anxiously.  "Tell  me  that, 
anyway.  Surely  lunch  can  wait.  I'm  in  no  hurry." 

"You  don't  mean  to  say  that  you  have  been  worrying 
about  it — seriously,  I  mean  ?"  she  said. 

"Worrying?     Of  course  I  have,"  replied  Jacob.     "I've 


274.  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

been  working  myself  up  into  a  state  of  desperation.  I 
couldn't  write  a  line,"  he  added,  consciously  relieved  to  find 
some  plausible  excuse  for  his  failure  to  work. 

Her  face  softened  to  a  look  of  tenderness.  "You  weren't 
afraid  that  I  shouldn't  come  back  ?"  she  said,  smiling. 

"Oh,  no !  I  knew  you  would  come  back.  You  wouldn't 
go  off  without  telling  me,"  Jacob  said.  "But  I  was  afraid 
it  might  upset  you.  I  had  quite  made  up  my  mind  to  go 
back  to  Cornwall  with  you  on  Monday." 

"Am  I  so  precious?"  she  asked,  and  only  rescued  herself 
from  his  assurances  by  insisting  that  she  must  get  the  lunch, 
and  that  afterwards  she  would  tell  him  all  about  her  inter- 
view with  Mrs.  Parmenter. 

But  when  she  came  to  her  story,  Jacob  did  not  find  it  sat- 
isfactory. He  missed  some  essential,  and  guessed  that  she 
was  withholding  it  to  save  him  anxiety. 

"Do  you  mean  to  say  that  was  all  ?"  he  asked  suspiciously, 
when  she  had  given  him  a  very  brief  account  of  Mrs.  Par- 
menter's  regrets  that  Betty  had  left  Montague  Place,  and 
had  emphasised  the  fact  that  the  old  lady  had  not  brought 
any  accusation  on  moral  grounds. 

"Practically,"  Betty  thought. 

Jacob  shook  his  head.  "You  are  trying  to  save  me  some- 
thing," he  said.  "And  I  won't  be  saved.  Betty,  you  must 
not  keep  these  things  from  me.  If  she  has  been  persuading 
you  to  leave  me,  you  must  tell  me  all  about  it." 

"She  didn't;  I  told  you  she  didn't." 

"Well,  then,  what  was  it?" 

"The  poor  old  dear  is  really  very  ill,  Jimmy,"  Betty  said. 
"She  has  fancies." 

"About  me?" 

"Partly." 

"Well,  why  not  tell  me?"  he  urged.  "Surely  you  can 
trust  me  to  make  allowances.  And,  darling,  you  must  see 
that  if  you  don't  tell  me  now,  I  shall  certainly  imagine  the 
most  horrible  things." 

Betty  took  his  hand  and  held  it  across  the  corner  of  the 


ACHIEVEMENT  275 

table.  "She  has  taken  an  extraordinary  dislike  to  you,"  she 
said. 

"In  what  way?" 

"I  don't  know  quite.  Obviously  she  couldn't  abuse  you 
to  me.  But  she  kept  asking  me  if  I  was  quite  sure  that  I 
hadn't  made  a  mistake." 

"What  did  you  say?" 

"I  said  I  was  absolutely  sure." 

"You  are,  dear,  aren't  you — absolutely  sure?"  put  in 
Jacob.  But  when  she  had  satisfied  him  on  that  score,  he 
returned  to  his  cross-examination. 

"But  why  not  tell  me  all  this  at  once?"  he  asked. 

"I  thought  it  would  make  you  so  angry."  Betty  paused ; 
she  was  still  holding  his  hand,  and  she  pressed  it  before  she 
continued :  "You  see,  dear,  I  think  she  must  have  written  to 
father  and  Aunt  Mary,  and  said  things  about  you.  I  think 
that's  one  reason  why  they  have  been  so  horrid  to  us." 

Jacob  looked  vicious. 

"There,  I  knew  I  had  better  not  tell  you!"  Betty  ex- 
claimed. 

He  controlled  himself  sufficiently  to  smile.  "I'm  not 
really  angry  with  the  old  fool,"  he  said  bitterly.  "Mischief- 
maker  !  Oh,  the  harm  these  people  do  in  the  name  of  Chris- 
tianity !" 

"Yes,  I  know,"  Betty  admitted.  "But  you  must  make 
allowances  for  Mrs.  Parmenter  in  this  case,  dear.  She  was 
terribly  upset.  .  .  ." 

"And  she  had  to  vent  her  spite  at  losing  a  valuable  part- 
ner." 

"I'm  very,  very  sorry  for  her,"  Betty  said  quietly. 

Jacob  sighed.  "Yes,  that's  you,"  he  said.  "And  I  love 
you  for  it,  you  angel.  You  make  excuses  for  everybody." 

"No,  I  don't,"  she  returned.  "I'm  bitter  about  Violet 
and  Hilda.  Hilda,  at  least,  might  have  understood." 

"I  suppose  the  Parmenter  woman  poisoned  their  minds 
too,"  said  Jacob.  "I'm  inclined  to  forgive  them."  He  had 
a  picture  in  his  mind  of  Betty's  sisters,  and  felt  a  little  ten- 
derness for  them.  He  was  sure  that  they  must  be  sweet 


276  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

and  lovable.  "Did  she  describe  me  as  a  little  Jew  seducer, 
do  you  think?"  he  went  on,  anticipating  a  fervent  denial. 

"She  had  had  such  an  awful  experience  herself,  you  see," 
Betty  explained. 

Jacob's  face  grew  hot.  "Oh,  but  I  say!"  he  burst  out, 
"you  don't  really  think  that  she  might  have  said  that?" 

"I  don't  know  what  she  said.  It  must  have  been  some- 
thing pretty  horrible."  Betty  looked  at  him  anxiously. 
"She  isn't  quite  right  in  her  head,  I'm  sure  she  isn't,"  she 
added. 

"Oh,  Lord !"  commented  Jacob.  "It  makes  me  feel  pretty 
beastly!"  He  got  up  from  the  table  and  shook  himself,  as 
if  he  would  shake  off  the  foulness  of  that  aspersion.  "Do  I 
look  like  a  Jew?"  he  asked,  frowning. 

"Not  a  bit,  not  the  least  bit  in  the  world,"  she  assured 
him. 

He  went  over  to  the  fly-blown  mirror  above  the  mantel- 
piece and  studied  himself  anxiously.  "I  can't  see  it,  any- 
way," he  said.  "Not  that  I  really  care,"  he  went  on.  "The 
Jews  are  a  jolly  clever  race.  It's  a  pity  in  many  ways  that 
I  haven't  got  more  Jewish  qualities.  But,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  I'm  only  a  quarter  Jew,  one  grandparent  in  four,  you 
know — my  paternal  grandmother.  Stahl  is  a  Christian  name 
enough;  and,  unfortunately  for  me  perhaps,  I  take  after 
my  mother,  who  was  pure  Celt — Irish.  I  hardly  remember 
her,  of  course ;  but  Aunt  Hester  has  told  me  how  she  never 
could  concentrate  on  anything;  she  was  always  expecting  a 
miracle  to  put  things  right  for  her — and  for  me,  too." 

Betty  got  up  and  put  her  arms  round  his  neck.  "Oh! 
what  does  it  matter,  old  silly?"  she  asked.  "You're  you, 
that's  quite  enough." 

He  surrendered  himself  to  the  delight  of  her  love  for  a 
few  minutes,  but  presently  he  returned  to  the  essential 
topic  by  saying: 

"Yes,  dear,  this  is  quite  convincing  to  us ;  but  somehow  I 
don't  like  the  idea  that  your  father  and  all  your  other  people 
should  run  away  with  the  notion  that  I  am  a  horrible  little 
Jew  seducer.  Wasn't  that  what  you  said?" 


ACHIEVEMENT  277 

"No,  I  didn't  say  it,"  replied  Betty.  "You  said  it.  But  I 
believe  she  must  have  said  something  of  the  sort — from 
father's  letter,  you  remember." 

"Well,  do  you  like  it  ?"  he  asked.  "Do  you  like  them  to 
have  that  impression?" 

"I  don't  care — in  a  way,"  she  said. 

"It  hurts  my  vanity,"  Jacob  announced,  after  a  short  de- 
liberation. "I'm  rather  a  snob,  I  think." 

"I  don't  see  how  we  can  help  it,"  urged  Betty. 

"Would  you  let  me  go  and  see  them — your  people?" 

"At  Beechcombe?"  She  was  plainly  startled,  a  little 
alarmed  by  the  suggestion. 

"Yes.    Why  not?" 

"Would  you  really  go  down  there  and  face  them  ?" 

"Like  a  bird,"  he  said,  full  of  confidence  at  that  minute. 

But  she  knew  him  better  than  that.  "You'd  hate  it  when 
the  time  came,"  she  said. 

"I  might,"  he  admitted  honestly.  "But  I'd  sooner  do  that 
than  let  them  go  on  thinking  all  sorts  of  beastly  things.  It 
reflects  on  you,"  he  added. 

"They  can  think  anything  they  like  about  me,"  Betty  said, 
with  an  assumption  of  recklessness. 

"Of  course,  what  they  do  think  is  that  you  have  been 
quixotic  and  sacrificed  yourself  as  usual." 

She  did  not  deny  that ;  she  was  trying  to  find  some  way 
out  of  the  trouble  without  letting  Jacob  go  down  to  Beech- 
combe.  She  doubted  if  he  would  produce  a  good  effect 
there.  He  would  so  probably  lose  his  temper  with  her 
father  and  denounce  religious  intolerance.  Moreover,  she 
wished  to  save  Jacob  the  nervous  strain  of  such  an  inter- 
view. 

"I'll  tell  you  what  we'll  do,"  she  announced.  "I'll  try 
to  get  Aunt  Mary  to  come  and  see  us  here.  I  believe  she 
would;  I  believe  I  could  make  her  come." 

"Not  a  bad  idea,"  Jacob  agreed,  more  than  a  little  re- 
lieved to  be  spared  the  ordeal  of  an  unsupported  attack  upon 
Beechcombe.  He  would  have  gone ;  but  he  knew  that  when 
the  time  came  he  would  have  suffered  agonies  of  trepidation. 


278  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

Nevertheless,  he  made  one  more  boast.  "All  the  same,  I 
should  like  to  meet  your  father,"  he  said.  It  was  true,  but 
he  would  have  liked  to  be  suddenly  confronted  with  his 
adversary,  to  be  spared  all  the  tremors  and  fears  of  antici- 
pation. 

"Well,  perhaps  you  will  later,"  Betty  said  hopefully. 
"But  I  will  write  to  Aunt  Mary  now  at  once,  and  then  I'm 
going  to  take  you  out  for  a  'bus  ride,  or  a  walk  or  some- 
thing. It's  a  lovely  day." 

"We'll  walk  all  the  way  down  to  Oxford  Street,"  Jacob 
agreed  joyfully,  "and  look  into  every  shop  as  we  go  along." 

"Very  well,"  replied  Betty,  with  all  the  enthusiasm  she 
could  muster.  She  would  have  preferred  a  neighbourhood 
less  frequented  by  people  who  might  recognise  her.  She 
wondered  what  she  would  do  if  they  suddenly  walked  into 
the  terrible  Mrs.  Gale.  But,  inspired  by  the  thought  of 
winning  over  Aunt  Mary,  Betty  was  full  of  hope  that 
afternoon.  She  was  undoubtedly  getting  over  her  silliness, 
she  thought.  Freda  had  laughed  at  her  that  morning.  "It 
isn't  as  though  you  were  hurting  anyone  else,"  Freda  had 
said.  "You  didn't  take  him  away  from  his  wife.  They 
weren't  living  together  all  those  years  ago  when  I  first  met 
him  in  Camden  Town." 


They  each  received  a  letter  on  Monday  morning.  The 
first  was  to  Betty  a  cause  of  mild  jubilation.  Aunt  Mary 
had  written  from  Beechcombe  a  short  note  to  say  that  she 
would  come  up  by  the  mid-day  train,  do  a  little  shopping, 
and  have  tea  with  them  in  Great  Ormond  Street  about 
five. 

"She  is  a  dear!"  Betty  said,  with  unusual  emotion. 

"She  must  be,"  agreed  Jacob. 

His  own  letter,  however,  gave  them  subject  for  consider- 
able doubt  and  anxiety.  The  editor  of  the  Daily  Post  had 
written,  asking  Jacob  if  he  could  conveniently  call  at  the 
offices  of  the  paper  at  four  o'clock  that  day.  No  intima- 
tion was  given  of  the  reason  for  this  request,  and  the 


ACHIEVEMENT  279 

formal  manner  of  the  letter  presented  no  clue  to  the  writer's 
intention. 

"What  should  we  do  if  he  doesn't  want  you  any  more?" 
Betty  said. 

"Lord  only  knows!"  returned  Jacob.  "It's  all  we've  got 
to  live  on.  I've  got  about  ninety  pounds  in  the  bank,  I 
think." 

Betty  reacted  immediately  when  she  saw  how  seriously 
Jacob  regarded  the  possibility  of  losing  his  work  on  the 
Daily  Post. 

"But  of  course  it  isn't  that,"  she  said  cheerfully.  "The 
editor  has  always  liked  your  reviews,  hasn't  'he  ?" 

"Apparently,"  replied  Jacob  gloomily.  "But  you  never 
know.  I  got  the  job  by  the  merest  fluke.  I  might  lose  it 
again  any  day." 

"If  you  did,  you'd  get  another  just  as  good,  or  better," 
she  encouraged  him. 

But  he  would  not  permit  himself  to  be  consoled  too 
easily. 

"It's  my  own  fault  if  I  do  lose  it,"  he  said.  "I've  slacked 
too  much.  And  you  know,  dear,  I've  wasted  a  lot  of  time 
on  that  bally  book." 

"I  wonder  you  dare  to  sit  there  and  say  that  time  was 
wasted,"  Betty  said  indignantly.  "Your  book  is  far  more 
important  than  your  old  reviewing." 

"But  less  profitable,"  remarked  Jacob. 

"Boo!"  replied  Betty. 

"But,  you  darling,  you're  so  prejudiced  in  my  favour," 
he  urged. 

"We  shall  see,"  she  said ;  and  he  allowed  her  to  persuade 
him  that  his  book  was  going  to  make  their  fortunes.  She 
was  so  splendidly  convinced  that  she  infected  him  with  the 
glamour  of  her  own  confidence. 

That  morning  he  worked  with  enthusiasm  to  finish  his 
reviews,  not  from  any  dread  of  editorial  reproof,  but  be- 
cause he  wanted  them  done  in  order  that  he  might  go  on 
with  his  novel. 

But  when  he  was  in  the  downstairs  waiting-room  of  the 


280  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

Daily  Post  offices,  the  ideal  of  his  book  waned  and  took  a 
less  magnificent  shape.  He  thought  of  all  the  writers  who 
must  have  been  in  this  place  before  him,  and  those  who 
came  to  it  now,  every  day — men  who  were  so  much  better 
read  than  himself,  who  had  had  more  experience  of  life,  and 
who  were  gifted  with  such  remarkable  powers  of  literary 
expression.  He  grew  hot  at  the  thought  of  his  own  temerity 
in  daring  to  match  his  work  with  theirs. 

The  influence  of  that  urgent,  authoritative  place  intimi- 
dated him.  He  had  come  to  no  criticism  of  it  as  yet.  The 
Daily  Post  appeared  to  him  as  the  organ  of  sincerity  and 
truth,  as  presenting  a  high  standard  of  achievement.  He 
was  proud  to  know  that  he  was  one  of  its  reviewers,  and 
that  he  had  an  appointment  with  its  editor,  even  though  that 
appointment  might  have  a  sinister  significance.  He  won- 
dered if  the  commissionaire  who  had  taken  his  name,  or 
the  boy  who  had  conducted  him  to  the  waiting-room,  knew 
that  he  was  a  contributor,  and  not  some  supplicant  for  an 
impossible  favour.  He  would  have  liked  to  advertise  the 
fact  of  his  small  importance  with  a  becoming  modesty,  to 
say  that  he  played  a  tiny  part  in  the  running  of  this  great 
machine.  Nevertheless,  the  place  itself  intimidated  him. 
It  was  so  great  and  so  independent,  so  perfectly  able  to 
conduct  its  own  affairs  without  any  help  of  his.  And  about 
it  all  was  that  air  of  authority.  He  was  there  to  receive 
a  judgment,  perhaps  to  be  condemned  in  that  he  had  failed 
to  reach  that  high  standard  of  achievement  that  the  paper 
demanded. 

Only  on  one  previous  occasion  had  he  been  in  those  offices 
or  seen  the  editor,  Mr.  Gresswell.  Then  Jacob  had  been, 
indeed,  a  timid  supplicant,  and  he  had  obtained  his  inter- 
view almost  by  accident.  He  had  taken  a  step  in  the  fifteen 
months  that  had  intervened,  he  thought.  He  was  no  longer 
without  any  credentials ;  he  had  acquitted  himself  decently. 
He  might  have  done  better,  but  he  had  not  been  altogether  a 
failure.  And  then  his  thoughts  suddenly  leaped  back  to  the 
"awful  week"  that  had  preceded  Betty's  coming  to  Corn- 
wall. He  saw  himself  in  the  depths  of  despair  and  feeble- 


ACHIEVEMENT  281 

ness,  a  creature  utterly  unrelated  to  this  newspaper  office — 
a  stark,  primitive  thing,  repulsive,  yet  without  any  sort  of 
fear  such  as  now  held  him  of  the  judgment  of  authority. 
But  that  miserable,  desperate  man  in  the  house  in  Trevar- 
rian  had  been  himself ;  that  mood  of  recklessness  was  as  in- 
tegral as  his  present  mood  of  nervousness.  Why  did  he 
react  so  strangely  to  his  surroundings?  Was  there  some 
deep,  essential  characteristic  of  the  man,  Jacob  Stahl,  or 
was  he  merely  the  creature  of  his  circumstances?  It  had 
occurred  to  him  before,  and  it  seemed  to  him  now  that  he 
had  no  individuality  whatever.  If  he  had,  why  could  he 
not  confront  Mr.  Gresswell  with  the  wild  man  who  had 
seen  visions  down  at  Mawgan  Forth?  He  smiled  at  the 
thought  that  he  might  produce  the  effect  of  literary  eccen- 
tricity. Better  that,  perhaps,  than  to  seem  a  nonentity. 
Genius  was  always  eccentric,  and  he  was  timidly  orthodox. 
Very  plainly  he  was  no  genius.  No  one  but  Betty  had 
ever  supposed  he  was. 

He  looked  at  his  watch,  and  found  that  it  was  half-past 
four,  and  he  had  promised  to  be  back  in  Great  Ormond 
Street  by  five  o'clock  to  receive  Mrs.  Lynneker.  The  thought 
of  that  important  interview — he  certainly  wanted  to  be  pres- 
ent— diverted  him  from  his  introspection,  and  he  spent 
another  five  minutes  in  growing  impatience  before  the  boy 
came  to  announce  that  the  editor  would  see  Mr.  Stahl. 
He  was  a  new  boy,  and  as  yet  somewhat  overwhelmed  by 
the  gravity  of  his  functions. 

Jacob  instantly  forgot  his  recent  impatience,  and  followed 
the  boy  upstairs  with  the  docility  and  dumb  misery  of  a 
first  offender. 

Mr.  Gresswell  was  standing  by  a  table  at  one  end  of  his 
impressively  furnished  room.  He  had  a  book  in  his  hand, 
taken  up,  apparently,  from  a  collection  of  fifty  or  more  ar- 
ranged on  the  table  before  him. 

As  Jacob  entered,  Gresswell  looked  up  with  a  kindly 
smile,  but  he  did  not  put  down  his  book  nor  offer  to  shake 
hands. 


282  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

"Are  you  settled  in  London  permanently  now  ?"  he  asked, 
without  any  form  of  greeting. 

"I  hope  so,"  replied  Jacob.  He  felt  he  could  not  give  a 
more  definite  answer.  At  any  moment  he  might  have  to 
take  Betty  back  to  Cornwall. 

"I  am  going  to  make  some  more  practical  arrangement 
with  regard  to  the  reviewing,"  the  editor  said,  passing  over 
the  uncertainty  of  Jacob's  reply.  "At  present  it  is  most 
unsatisfactory." 

"Yes?"  said  Jacob,  to  fill  the  pause  that  followed.  The 
opening  had  been  equivocal,  but  he  had  an  intuition  that  he 
was  in  some  way  to  be  promoted.  "I  hope  my  stuff  .  .  ." 
he  began. 

"Certainly,  certainly,"  Gresswell  said,  as  if  he  were  an- 
swering a  specific  question.  "It  isn't  that  at  all.  It's 
rather  .  .  ." — he  put  up  his  disengaged  hand  and  touched 
his  glasses — "it  is  chiefly  a  question  of  proportion.  One  re- 
viewer sends  me  in  a  column  about  some  comparatively 
unimportant  book  that  happens  to  interest  him,  and  other 
books  get  no  attention." 

"I  see,"  agreed  Jacob,  and  then,  feeling  that  his  own  share 
in  the  conversation  was  not,  so  far,  remarkable  for  any  dis- 
play of  intelligence,  he  went  on :  "It — it  depends,  of  course, 
to  a  certain  extent  on  who  is  to  judge  the  relative  values." 
He  meant  to  explain  himself  further,  but  Gresswell  gave 
him  no  further  opportunity. 

"What  I  am  proposing,"  he  said,  "is  that  we  should  have 
an  informal  meeting  here  every  Monday,  at,  say  half-past 
three,  yourself  and  one  or  two  other  of  our  reviewers,  when 
we  could  go  through  the  books  together,  and  decide  which 
should  be  done,  and,  to  a  certain  extent,  on  the  length  of 
the  notices.  I  have  seen  two  or  three  of  our  more  regular 
contributors,  and  they  are  quite  willing."  He  paused  and 
smiled  his  friendly  smile  again.  "What  do  you  feel  about 
it?"  he  asked.  "Would  you  be  able  to  come?" 

"Oh  yes,  I  should  like  to,"  Jacob  said.  It  was  certainly 
very  difficult  to  produce  any  effect  of  intelligence  in  a  one- 
sided conversation  like  this ;  but  as  he  was  feverishly  seek- 


ACHIEVEMENT  883 

ing  for  subtle  comment  on  the  scheme,  an  astonished-looking 
young  man  in  spectacles  came  in  with  a  sheet  of  very  limp 
paper  in  his  hand.  He  stared  at  Jacob  and  the  editor,  said 
"Oh !"  in  a  thin,  high  voice,  and  then  stood  still  with  every 
appearance  of  bitter  distress  just  inside  the  door. 

Gresswell  put  down  the  book  he  was  still  holding  and 
stretched  out  his  hand,  and  the  young  man  instantly  came 
forward  and  proffered  the  damp  sheet  he  carried. 

"Mr.  Grattan  thought  it  ought  to  be  recast,  sir,"  he  said 
in  a  rapid,  half-expostulatory  whine. 

Gresswell  took  no  notice  of  him  whatever.  He  was  hold- 
ing up  the  wide  sheet  before  him  and  reading  it  at  an  amaz- 
ing speed.  Jacob  could  see  that  the  sheet  was  a  single  page 
of  the  Daily  Post,  printed  apparently  in  very  pale  ink.  He 
was  excited  and  pleased,  conscious  of  his  new  importance 
as  a  member  of  that  Monday  conclave,  and  also  of  a  feeling 
that  this  sight  of  a  daily  paper  in  the  process  of  making 
was  a  valuable  and  interesting  experience. 

"Cut  it  out,"  remarked  Gresswell  shortly,  returning  the 
sheet  to  the  anxious  young  man  in  spectacles,  who  said, 
"Yes,  sir,"  and  waited,  evidently  expecting  further  instruc- 
tions. 

The  editor  crossed  the  room  to  his  desk,  took  up  a  long 
slip  of  paper  and  ran  his  eye  rapidly  down  it. 

"Hasn't  the  review  of  Hamilton's  book  been  set  up  yet?" 
he  asked,  with  a  touch  of  impatience. 

"It  hasn't  come  in  yet,"  squeaked  the  young  man. 

Jacob  grew  suddenly  hot.  "Er — did  you  mean  those 
essays?"  he  put  in  nervously. 

"Yes.    Did  you  have  them?"  asked  Gresswell. 

"I've  got  the  review  here,"  returned  Jacob,  taking  a  fools- 
cap envelope  out  of  his  pocket.  "I — I  thought,  as  I  was 
coming  down,  I  could  bring  my  reviews  instead  of  posting 
them.  I  hope  .  .  ." 

"Do  you  know  how  much  it  will  make?"  Gresswell  said. 

Jacob,  by  good  luck,  guessed  the  meaning  of  the  question. 
"About  a  column,  I  think,''  he  said.  He  knew  by  now  that 
three  sheets  of  foolscap  in  his  own  handwriting  was  almost 


284  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

exactly  equivalent  to  a  column  of  printed  matter  in  the 
paper.  "I  gave  it  rather  a  long  notice;  I  thought  .  .  ." 

Gresswell  nodded  curtly.  He  had  taken  the  envelope 
from  Jacob,  and  now,  having  glanced  through  the  contents, 
he  separated  the  review  he  wanted  and  gave  it  to  the  young 
man  in  spectacles.  "I'll  read  the  proof,"  he  remarked. 
'There  won't  be  time  to  send  it  to  Mr.  Stahl." 

"I'm  afraid  I  kept  it  rather  long,"  apologised  Jacob,  when 
he  and  the  editor  were  once  more  alone  together.  "I  was 
rather  upset  last  week  coming  up  to  town  and  so  on." 

Mr.  Gresswell  did  not  seem  to  hear  him.  "Then  you'll 
come  to  the  office  next  Monday  at  half-past  three,"  he  said. 
"And  about  this  week,  is  there  anything  here  you  would 
care  to  take?" 

It  was  past  five  when  the  elated  Jacob  got  away  at  last. 
He  hailed  a  hansom  as  soon  as  he  emerged  into  Fleet  Street. 
He  had  an  armful  of  books — he  had  insisted  that  he  could 
take  them  with  him  as  he  was  going  straight  back  to  his 
rooms — but  neither  that  encumbrance  nor  the  thought  of 
Aunt  Mary  privately  influencing  Betty  in  Great  Ormond 
Street,  was  the  true  cause  of  his  extravagance.  He  felt 
that  his  good  luck  demanded  recognition.  He  was  a  per- 
son of  importance  now — a  member  of  a  weekly  meeting  of 
reviewers,  with  a  voice  in  deciding  the  fate  of  all  authors, 
great  and  small,  so  far  as  their  recognition  by  the  Daily  Post 
was  concerned. 

"I  have  had  luck,"  he  reflected.  "If  it  hadn't  been  for 
Betty,  I  should  never  have  done  that  review  in  time  to  take 
it  down  with  me,  and  then  there  might  have  been  the  devil 
to  pay!  As  it  happened  .  .  .  And,  after  all,  I  had  only 
had  the  book  for  a  fortnight!" 


VI 

He  found  Aunt  Mary  sitting  in  the  better  of  the  two  arm- 
chairs when  he  arrived.  She  had  a  full  cup  of  tea  in  her 
hand,  and  in  the  saucer  was  balanced  an  untouched  slice  of 


ACHIEVEMENT  285 

bread  and  butter  that  had  become  partly  soaked  with  spilt 
tea. 

She  looked  up  at  Jacob  as  he  came  in ;  indeed,  she  stared 
at  him  with  a  steadiness  that  would  have  been  rude,  had  it 
not  been  for  some  pathetic  appeal  in  her  expression.  Her 
mouth  drooped  curiously  at  the  corners;  it  was  the  mouth 
of  a  small  child  on  the  verge  of  tears. 

"This  is  Aunt  Mary,  dear,"  Betty  said ;  and  Jacob,  with  a 
sudden  feeling  of  compassion  for  the  little,  pathetic  old 
woman  in  the  armchair,  came  quickly  forward  and  offered 
her  his  hand. 

"I'm  so  glad  you  were  able  to  come,"  he  said.  Whether 
because  of  his  recent  triumph,  or  because  he  realised  in  some 
way  that  this  fragile  little  creature  was  already  beaten,  a  sub- 
ject for  tenderness  rather  than  opposition,  he  felt  strangely 
compassionate  towards  her.  He  felt  as  if  he  were  a  splen- 
didly successful  son,  eager  for  the  love  of  a  mother  who 
had  misjudged  him,  and  had  come  to  ask  his  forgiveness. 

Mrs.  Lynneker  fumbled  with  her  teacup,  and  gave  him  her 
delicate  hand.  She  held  him  tightly  for  a  moment,  gazing 
up  into  his  face  as  if  she  would  read  his  most  secret  thought. 

"Betty  and  I  have  been  having  a  long  talk,"  she  said,  as 
she  released  him,  and  then  she  bent  over  her  cup  and  began 
to  eat  her  soaked  bread  and  butter. 

"Oh,  Aunt  Mary,  let  me  take  that  away  and  give  you 
some  more,"  Betty  said,  bending  forward. 

"It's  very  nice,  dear,  thank  you,"  returned  Mrs.  Lynneker, 
essaying  to  lift  the  sopped  bread,  pieces  of  which  fell  into 
her  cup. 

"Shall  I  take  it?"  asked  Jacob,  and  he  gently  took  the 
cup  from  her  and  passed  it  to  Betty. 

"I  must  make  some  more  tea,"  Betty  said,  getting  up. 

"Not  for  me,  dear,  please,"  put  in  Mrs.  Lynneker. 

"I  think  7  should  like  some,"  Jacob  said,  smiling.  "I 
have  been  in  a  stuffy  newspaper  office  for  the  last  hour  and 
a  half,  and  I  came  straight  back  in  a  hansom.  The  editor 
kept  me  so  long.  Editors  are  such  autocrats." 

Betty,  with  the  teapot  in  her  hand,  stood  hesitating  for  a 


286  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

moment  at  the  door  into  the  bedroom,  and  then,  as  if  re- 
assured, she  went  out  quickly  and  closed  the  door  behind 
her. 

Mrs.  Lynneker  looked  up  at  Jacob,  then,  with  the  same 
tremulous  air  of  appeal,  "Do  you  think  you're  doing  right, 
my  dear?"  she  said. 

"Oh,  I  do — really  I  do!"  replied  Jacob  gently. 

"I  can't  see  how  .  .  ."  Mrs.  Lynneker  began,  and  seemed 
to  change  her  mind,  for  she  went  on :  "You've  nice,  kind 
eyes,  and  you  look  sincere.  I'm  sure  you're  sincere." 

"It's  almost  something  more  than  sincerity  in  this  case," 
Jacob  said  in  a  low  voice,  blushing  faintly  at  her  praise  of 
him.  "I  mean  that  Betty  is  everything  to  me.  I  have  been 
such  a  failure,  and  she's  helping  to  make  me  a  success." 

"She's  a  dear,  sweet  thing!"  murmured  Mrs.  Lyn- 
neker. 

"Indeed  she  is,"  Jacob  agreed,  with  a  touch  of  embarrass- 
ment. Not  even  to  Aunt  Mary  could  he  speak  of  his  love 
for  Betty. 

"And  terribly  obstinate  when  once  she  has  made  up  her 
mind  about  a  thing,"  added  Mrs.  Lynneker. 

Jacob  laughed  softly.     "Perhaps,"  he  admitted. 

"But  nothing  can  alter  the  fact  that  you  two  are  living  in 
sin,"  Mrs.  Lynneker  concluded,  with  a  sudden  effort  of  de- 
termination. 

Jacob  sighed.  He  knew  that  argument  would  be  worse 
than  useless  with  this  convinced  little  lady. 

"I  wonder  if  there  are  not  worse  things  than  a  sin  of 
this  kind?"  he  said  tentatively. 

"Worse  things  ?"  repeated  Mrs.  Lynneker,  with  a  sugges- 
tion of  aggressiveness  that  carried  no  conviction. 

"What  would  happen  to  us  if  we  were  separated?"  asked 
Jacob. 

"I  hope  you  would  try  and  lead  a  godly  life.  I'm  sure 
Betty  would,"  said  Mrs.  Lynneker. 

"Betty  might;  I  shouldn't,"  replied  Jacob,  with  a  fearful 
earnestness.  "It  would  be  the  end  of  me  morally,  and  .  .  . 
and  every  way,  I  suppose  there  is  some  inherent. weakness 


ACHIEVEMENT  287 

in  me.  I  have  often  been  afraid  there  is.  But  Betty  has,  in 
effect,  you  know,  converted  me — spiritually.  She  has  been  a 
wonderful  influence.  I  dare  say  one  ought  to  be  strong  and 
splendid  and  give  her  up,  but  I  can't.  It  isn't  a  question  of 
what  one  ought  to  be,  but  of  what  one  is.  I  couldn't  do 
without  her  now.  I  simply  could  not  go  on  living.  It's  hard 
to  explain,  but  do  you  know  what  I  mean?" 

Mrs.  Lynneker  looked  up  at  him  with  that  pathetic  droop 
of  her  mouth  more  marked  than  ever. 

"Yes,  I  know,"  she  said.  "But  you  don't  look  weak.  I 
shouldn't  like  to  think  you  were  such  a  poor  creature." 

Jacob  smiled,  and  she  smiled  with  him — a  smile  full  of 
humour.  "You're  not  a  bit  the  sort  of  man  I  thought  you 
were,"  she  said. 

"From  Mrs.  Parmenter's  description?"  asked  Jacob. 

Mrs.  Lynneker  shook  her  head.  "Never  mind  where  I 
got  my  ideas  from,"  she  said.  "And  I  didn't  say  whetheu 
you  were  better  or  worse  than  I  expected." 

"I  don't  think  I  could  have  been  worse,  could  I?"  Jacob 
said.  "If  I  can  judge  at  all  from  the  letters  that  Betty's 
family  wrote,  they  seemed  to  have  supposed  that  I  was  a 
professional  criminal  of  the  most  despicable  type." 

"Serve  you  right !"  said  Mrs.  Lynneker ;  and  before  Jacob 
could  question  that  judgment,  Betty  returned  with  the  fresh 
tea. 

"Well,  dear,  you  left  us  alone  a  long  time,  but  I  don't 
know  that  we've  come  to  any  better  understanding,"  re- 
marked her  aunt. 

"I  had  to  boil  the  kettle,"  Betty  said,  and  added :  "At  all 
events,  you  don't  seem  to  have  quarrelled  very  desper- 
ately." 

"Oh,  we  have!"  returned  Mrs.  Lynneker.  "He's  every 
bit  as  obstinate  as  you  are.  You  are  two  very  wicked,  self- 
opinionated  young  people,  and  I  don't  know  what's  to  be- 
come of  you." 

"I  steadfastly  deny  that  we  are  the  least  wicked,"  said 
Jacob.  "We  aren't  hurting  anybody  .  .  ." 

"Except  yourselves,"  interrupted  Aunt  Mary. 


288  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

"But  do  you  know  that,  so  far  from  hurting  ourselves,  I 
am  sure  that  I  am  a  very  much  better  man  in  every  way 
than  I  was  six  months  ago?"  Jacob  said. 

Mrs.  Lynneker's  tea  was  destined  to  neglect  that  after- 
noon. She  put  down  the  fresh  cup  that  Betty  had  given 
to  her,  clasped  her  hands  together,  and  half-timidly,  yet 
with  a  strong  emotional  fervour,  began  to  bear  witness  for 
the  truth  of  her  gospel. 

This  message  was  evidently  the  one  she  had  come  to 
deliver.  Until  now  she  had  been  confused  in  its  delivery, 
less  by  the  interruptions  of  the  two  people  she  had  to  re- 
prove, than  by  the  many  excuses  her  own  mind  had  framed 
for  them.  But  her  opportunity  had  come  at  last.  Jacob's 
boast  of  moral  betterment  had  provided  the  text  for  her 
mission.  She  had  to  make  it  clear  to  him,  and  incidentally 
to  Betty,  who  must  have  known  it  all  before,  that  ignorant, 
feeble  humanity  was  unable  to  judge  its  own  condition ;  that 
this  very  feeling  of  righteousness  might  be,  and  very  prob- 
ably was,  a  snare  of  the  Evil  One;  that  the  one  and  only 
safe  guide  to  conduct  was  to  be  found  in  the  Book  that 
God  had  given  us,  and  that  if  we  despised  and  rejected 
that  inspired  Word,  we  could  only  expect  misery  in  this 
world  and  eternal  punishment  in  the  world  to  come. 

The  little  lady  delivered  her  message  with  a  fine  sincerity. 
Hers  was,  indeed,  the  faith  of  a  little  child ;  and  her  beauti- 
ful honesty  and  the  earnestness  of  her  words  deeply  af- 
fected Jacob,  although  not  in  the  least  in  the  manner  in- 
tended by  the  preacher.  He  was  moved  to  an  admiration 
of  her  courage  and  her  sweet  simplicity,  and  he  was  emo- 
tionally glad  that  she  should  have  the  consolation  of  the 
religion  that  so  perfectly  filled  her  needs.  He  tried  to  find 
some  attitude  for  himself,  some  expression  that  should 
maintain  his  own  resolution  with  regard  to  Betty,  while  it 
could  in  no  way  give  a  cause  for  grief  to  the  bright-eyed 
little  woman  who  seemed  to  desire  so  intensely  his  soul's 
welfare. 

But  when  she  had  finished,  she  gave  him  no  opportunity 
for  any  profession  of  feeling.  No  doubt  she  thought  that 


ACHIEVEMENT  289 

she  had  sown  the  good  seed,  and  that  it  might,  in  God's 
own  time,  bring  forth  the  fruit  of  the  Spirit.  And  with 
her  clear  duty  performed,  she  dropped  the  mission  of  Evan- 
gelist as  abruptly  as  she  had  taken  it  up. 

"My  dear,  I  must  go,"  she  said,  getting  quite  briskly  to 
her  feet  and  drawing  her  mantle  together.  "If  I  could  get 
a  hansom  .  .  .?"  she  suggested,  looking  at  Jacob. 

"It  isn't  easy  here,"  he  told  her.  "Sometimes  there's  one 
in  Queen  Square;  but  if  you  could  walk  as  far  as  Cosmo 
Place.  It's  only  a  few  yards,  you  know.  .  .  " 

She  nodded.     "Betty  will  show  me,"  she  said. 

At  the  sitting-room  door  Jacob  pointed  to  the  pile  of 
books  he  had  set  down  on  the  chair  on  the  landing.  He 
had  wished  to  enter  the  room  unencumbered. 

"My  week's  work,"  he  said.  It  was  the  first  opportunity 
he  had  had  of  telling  Betty  that  all  was  well  as  far  as  his 
job  on  the  Daily  Post  was  concerned. 

She  smiled  at  him,  conveying  her  understanding  and 
pleasure. 

Mrs.  Lynneker  took  his  hand.  "I'm  sure  you  mean  well," 
she  said ;  "and  I  can  see  you're  both  very  happy." 

Jacob  felt  that  it  was  a  benediction. 


,      vii 

He  met  Betty  at  the  front  door  as  she  returned. 

"Are  you  running  because  you  are  so  eager  to  get  back  to 
me,  or  because  you  want  the  street  to  know  why  you  went 
out  without  a  hat?"  he  asked. 

"Both,"  she  said.    "Come  along.    Isn't  she  a  dear?" 

"I  love  her,"  replied  Jacob  with  enthusiasm. 

"And  when  she  gets  home,  she'll  write  us  a  long  letter, 
repeating  all  that  she  said  this  afternoon,"  Betty  said. 

"Will  she?  Why  that?"  asked  Jacob,  when  they  had 
reached  their  own  rooms  on  the  second  floor. 

"Because,  as  she  goes  back  in  the  train,  she'll  think  that 
she  wasn't  emphatic  enough." 

"Does  she  do  it  all  conscientiously,  to  justify  her  own 


290  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

belief,  knowing  that  she  hasn't  a  chance  of  altering  our 
opinion,  do  you  suppose?" 

Betty  shook  her  head.  "She  hopes,"  she  said.  "She 
believes  so  absolutely  in  sudden  conversion.  And  she  thinks 
that  one  day  something  she  has  said  will  suddenly  take 
'root,'  as  she  would  say,  and  that  we  shall  'see  the  light,' 
you  know." 

"And  until  that  day  comes  she  isn't  really  so  dreadfully 
vexed  with  us,  I  take  it?" 

"Not  now.     She  likes  you." 

"I  somehow  fancied  she  did,"  replied  Jacob.  "She  is 
perfectly  human  really,  isn't  she?" 

"In  spite  of  her  religion?"  asked  Betty. 

"Well,  isn't  that  what  you  felt  about  it?" 

"I  believe  I  did,"  Betty  acknowledged.  "She  was  so 
ready  to  overlook  our  wickedness  on  her  own  account.  She 
didn't  once  actually  find  fault  with  us,  did  she?" 

"Only  on  religious  grounds." 

Betty  pondered  that  for  a  moment.  "She  is  such  a  dear!" 
she  concluded,  and  then  went  on :  "Well,  and  how  did  you 
get  on  ?" 

"Oh,  splendidly!"  returned  Jacob,  and  gave  her  a  full 
account  of  his  interview  with  Gresswell. 

"Does  it  mean  more  money?"  asked  Betty. 

"N-no,  probably  not,"  he  admitted ;  "but  it  will  be  rather 
jolly  meeting  the  other  men  there,  and — well,  it's  an  honour 
in  a  way,  isn't  it  ?" 

She  smiled  at  him.  "Wait  till  your  book's  finished,"  she 
said.  "Everyone  will  be  running  after  you  then." 

He  laughed  at  her.  "Think  of  the  number  of  novels  that 
are  published  every  year,"  he  said.  "Something  over  a 
thousand,  I  believe.  I  shall  be  just  one  of  that  lot,  and  a 
quite  undistinguished  one  at  that." 

Nevertheless,  he  was  pleased  with  her  and  with  himself — 
glad  that  she  should  have  such  faith  in  him,  and  in  some 
way  glad,  too,  that  he  knew  his  own  abilities  too  well  to 
be  flattered  into  any  conceit  of  them. 

"All  the  same,  I  do  seem  to  be  getting  on  a  little,"  he 


ACHIEVEMENT  291 

said.  "You've  brought  me  luck,  you  dear.  And  you  know," 
he  added,  falling  into  a  tone  of  analytical  retrospection,  "I'm 
like  that.  I  can  only  do  my  best  work  when  I'm  winning. 
When  I  used  to  play  chess,  I  could  never  fight  a  losing  game. 
I  lost  heart.  It  didn't  seem  worth  while,  not  worth  the  big 
effort.  I  preferred  to  give  up  that  game  and  start  another. 
He  paused  a  moment,  and  concluded:  "I'm  a  very  poor 
creature,  really." 

"It  seems  to  me  that  you've  been  fighting  a  losing  game 
all  your  life,"  replied  Betty. 

"Yes,  and  I  should  have  lost  it  if  I  hadn't  met  you."      . 

"I  don't  believe  it,"  Betty  said,  and  closed  that  discussion 
by  adding :  "Anyhow,  you're  winning  now,  and  I  must  think 
about  getting  the  dinner." 

"I'm  blowed  if  you  shall!"  protested  Jacob.  "This  is  an 
occasion,  and  we're  going  to  celebrate  it  by  having  dinner  at 
a  restaurant — the  Holborn,  for  example." 

"It  would  be  rather  a  treat  to  eat  a  dinner  I  hadn't  cooked 
myself,"  Betty  admitted. 

Jacob  had  never  thought  of  that. 


VIII 

He  was  mildly  extravagant  in  his  ordering  of  their  dinner, 
but  Betty's  influence  was  all  towards  restraint. 

"You're  too  cautious,  dear,"  he  said,  when  the  waiter  had 
gone. 

"It  frightens  me  sometimes  when  I  think  how  little  money 
we've  got,"  was  her  reply. 

"You  don't  believe  in  my  ability  to  make  more?"  he 
suggested. 

"I  do,"  she  protested— "you  know  I  do." 

"Well,  then?" 

"That's  no  reason  why  we  should  spend  it  before  it 
comes." 

"No,  I  know  you're  quite  right,"  he  admitted,  "and  we 
won't.  But  this  evening  is  an  occasion,  isn't  it,  with  my 


292  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

luck  at  the  office  and  Aunt  Mary's  forgiveness  ?  She  may 
pray  for  us,  but  she  has  forgiven  us." 

"And  you  feel  so  pleased  with  yourself,"  put  in  Betty, 
smiling. 

He  acknowledged  that  he  did.  "I  had  an  idea  for  my 
next  book  this  afternoon,"  he  went  on.  "Shall  I  tell  it  to 
you?" 

She  nodded  eagerly. 

"It's  slightly  fantastic,"  he  explained — "an  allegory  of 
sorts,  I  suppose— and  yet  the  fundamental  idea  of  it  comes 
out  of  my  own  experience.  The  theory  is  of  a  man  who 
reacts  so  tremendously  to  his  circumstances  that  he  is  a 
different  person  altogether  in  different  conditions.  It's  an 
enlargement  of  the  Jekyll  and  Hyde  business  in  one  way,  but 
treated  realistically,  you  know.  There  would  not  be  any 
romantic  potions  or  spells." 

He  paused  and  looked  at  Betty  for  approval,  and  she 
made  an  effort  to  cover  her  perplexity  and  give  him  the 
encouragement  that  she  knew  he  expected. 

Jacob  laughed.    "You  don't  follow  it,"  he  said. 

"I  do,"  protested  Betty,  "only  .  .  ." 

"Yes,  only  ...  of  course,  I  haven't  explained  myself  in 
the  least.  .  .  .  Really,  the  book  is  a  kind  of  satire.  It  conies 
out  of  to-day's  experience.  Imagine,  for  instance,  that  my 
man  were  to  live  in  Beechcombe  Rectory.  After  six  months 
he  would  be  mentally  qualified  for  a  curacy,  frightfully 
earnest  Churchman,  and  that  sort  of  thing.  If  that  were  the 
beginning,  it  would  be  very  convincing,  with  just  a  touch 
here  and  there  to  show  how  susceptible  he  is  to  other  influ- 
ences— an  adventure  in  the  beech-woods,  perhaps.  Then  he 
might  come  up  to  town  and  get  into  an  agnostic  set,  become  a 
furious  agnostic  himself,  and  so  on.  The  idea  is  that  he 
goes  on  increasingly  reacting  to  his  circumstances  until  he 
can  be,  for  all  intents  and  purposes,  a  dozen  different  people 
in  one  day." 

"And  what  would  happen  to  him  in  the  end?"  asked 
Betty. 


ACHIEVEMENT  293 

Jacob  meditated  for  a  moment.  "Well,"  he  said,  "you 
see  that  in  his  experiences  he  has  always  found  the  people 
he  has  lived  with  and  talked  to,  consistent.  Whatever  their 
point  of  view,  they've  stuck  to  it  through  thick  and  thin. 
When  facts  have  proved  them  in  the  wrong,  they  have  tried 
to  explain  the  facts  away.  But  one  day  he  meets  the  Rector, 
who  was  his  first  influence  at  the  beginning  of  the  book, 
and,  of  course,  my  man  naturally  begins  to  talk  as  if  he  were 
just  going  into  the  Church.  But  then  he  finds  that  the 
Rector  has  chucked  his  religion,  and  given  up  his  parish, 
doesn't  believe  in  anything  much ;  and  that  gives  my  man 
a  shock,  because  he  finds  that  the  Rector  has  no  longer  any 
influence,  he  does  not  produce  any  reaction,  and  then  my 
man  discovers  for  the  first  time  that  he  has  a  personality 
of  his  own  that  has  been  unconsciously  growing  out  of  all  his 
reactions." 

"What  sort  of  personality?"  Betty  asked.  There  could 
be  no  doubt  that  she  was  interested  now. 

"Well,  he'd  be  a  sort  of  god,  you  know,"  replied  Jacob; 
"not  condemning  anyone,  because  he  had  been  everything 
himself,  all-wise  and  all-loving,  with  no  sort  of  wish  to 
convert  anybody  from  anything — no  creed,  no  dogma.  It 
won't  work,  I  admit,  but  I  think  the  allegory  is  all  right; 
and  you  have  your  choice  of  morals,  because  it  is  implied 
that  you  can  never  convert  anyone  unless  you  are  absolutely 
convinced  yourself.  The  first  person  who  wasn't  stuck  up 
with  his  own  opinion  failed  to  produce  an  effect  upon  my 
man,  you  see." 

"I  think  it's  a  wonderful  idea,"  Betty  said. 

Jacob's  face  glowed  with  enthusiasm.  "Do  you  really?" 
he  insisted.  "Of  course,  you  understand  that  I  mean  to 
work  it  all  out  with  the  most  convincing  realism.  There 
won't  be  any  preaching  or  explanation  in  it — just  a  very 
serious  account  of  the  man's  life.  I  think  it  will  have  to  be 
written  by  another  fellow,  who  takes  it  all  very  much  in 
earnest,  and  sees  it  all  from  the  outside,  so  that  you  get 
various  aspects  of  the  man  as  seen  by  another  person.  The 
imaginary  writer  of  the  book  might  be  always  hopeful,  right 


294  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

up  to  the  end,  of  converting  the  man  to  some  particular 
doxy  or  other.  I  want  it  to  be  realistic  without  being  too 
definite,  you  know.  I  should  like  to  leave  a  little  doubt  as  to 
whether  the  man  who  is  supposed  to  write  the  book  hasn't 
got  hold  of  the  wrong  end  of  the  stick  now  and  again." 

They  discussed  the  idea  eagerly,  until  the  waiter's  im- 
patience to  be  rid  of  them  could  no  longer  be  ignored ;  but 
when  they  were  back  in  Great  Ormond  Street  they  found 
that  the  subject  had  lost  its  freshness. 

"Of  course,  you'll  finish  'John  Tristram'  first?"  Betty 
said,  after  a  pause. 

"Oh  yes,  rather!"  agreed  Jacob,  yawning.  "I  shall  put 
this  new  book  at  the  back  of  my  mind  for  the  present.  But 
you  do  think  it's  a  good  idea,  don't  you?" 

"I  think  it's  wonderful,"  Betty  said. 

"It's  odd  how  things  like  that  come  and  elaborate  them- 
selves in  one's  mind,"  said  Jacob.  "I  didn't  deliberately 
invent  that  story."  He  was  wondering  whether  this  curious 
phenomenon  was  not  an  evidence  of  genius,  and  Betty  put 
the  thought  into  words  for  him.  But  when  the  thing  was 
stated,  he  immediately  shrank  from  so  large  a  claim. 

"Something  else  is  wanted,  though,"  he  said.  "I  mean, 
the  ability  to  express  the  idea  in  written  words." 

"You've  got  that  all  right,"  returned  Betty,  with  confi- 
dence. 

"We  can  pretend  I  have,  just  between  ourselves,"  he 
said,  smiling.  "There  can't  be  any  harm  in  that.  But, 
you  dear,  loyal  darling,  please  never  tell  anyone  else,  will 
you?" 

It  seemed  to  them  both  that  night  that  fame  and  wealth 
were  very  near. 


XIV 
"JOHN   TRISTRAM" 


THE  first  important  step  towards  the  winning  of  those 
gifts  of  celebrity  and  fortune  was  to  be  taken  by  the 
publication  of  "John  Tristram,"  but  Jacob  made  little  prog- 
ress with  his  novel  that  summer.  One  reason  for  his  failure 
was  sound  enough,  as  under  the  new  arrangement  with  the 
Daily  Post  he  was  receiving  many  more  books  than  before, 
maintaining  now  a  steady  average  of  six  or  seven  every 
week.  Betty  frowned,  and  often  wickedly  counselled  him 
to  be  less  conscientious  in  his  reviewing.  But  that  was  an 
impossibility  for  him;  he  was  at  once  too  nervous  and  too 
vain  to  scamp  that  work.  He  might,  with  some  return  to  his 
old  inertia,  neglect  it,  put  a  book  aside  unread,  and  leave 
it  unnoticed  until  it  was  out  of  date;  but  what  he  did  was 
done  to  the  best  of  his  ability.  But,  indeed,  that  summer 
he  did  not  shirk  the  smallest  detail.  He  was  too  impressed 
by  the  sense  of  responsibility,  renewed  each  week  by  those 
visits  to  the  offices  of  his  paper ;  and  the  memory  of  the 
lesson  he  had  learnt  at  Trevarrian,  the  thought  of  the  extra 
handicap  that  was  laid  upon  him  when  he  allowed  his  work 
to  accumulate,  also  served  to  brace  him  and  maintain  his 
level  efficiency. 

There  was,  however,  another  influence  that  was  retarding 
the  progress  of  his  novel ;  he  was  confronted  by  a  tedious 
perplexity.  By  the  end  of  May  he  had  written  one  hundred 
and  twenty  thousand  words  of  Tristram's  story,  but  the 
dimly  visualised  end  of  it  all  seemed  as  far  away  as  ever. 
And  as  he  saw  the  problem,  only  two  alternatives  were  open 
to  him:  either  he  must  change  his  method,  and,  forsaking 
his  detailed  narration,  pass  over  a  period  of  years  in  half  a 

295 


296  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

dozen  chapters,  or  he  must  rewrite  the  whole  story  in  a 
more  condensed  form.  The  first  remedy  was  so  plainly  a 
makeshift  that,  whenever  he  considered  it,  he  ended  by 
resolutely  putting  it  away  from  him  as  a  temptation  to  weak- 
ness of  the  familiar  kind  that  had  so  often  undone  him  in 
the  past.  The  second  was  so  appalling  that  only  in  mo- 
ments of  the  most  exalted  determination  could  he  contem- 
plate the  task  without  a  feeling  of  sick  inability.  Fortu- 
nately, Betty  would  not  hear  of  that  drastic  scheme  of  re- 
writing the  whole  novel,  and  dismissed  it  without  hesitation 
when  he  put  it  before  her  as  the  only  way  out  of  his  diffi- 
culty. 

"It's  all  very  well,"  Jacob  urged,  braced  for  the  moment 
to  the  contemplation  of  splendid  endeavour ;  "but  what  else 
can  I  do  ?  The  bally  thing  will  be  half  a  million  words  long, 
if  I  go  on  as  I'm  doing  now.  It  would  take  me  two  years 
to  finish,  and  then  no  publisher  would  look  at  it." 

Betty  wrinkled  her  forehead.  "Couldn't  you  end  it  up 
somehow  shorter  than  that?"  she  asked. 

"I  shall  spoil  it  if  I  do,"  Jacob  said.  "The  last  part  of 
the  book  would  be  so  absolutely  faute  de  mieux;  it  would 
look  like  patchwork." 

"I  do  so  want  you  to  finish  it,"  sighed  Betty,  as  if  the 
expression  of  her  wish  must  in  some  way  induce  him  to 
find  a  solution. 

"I  want  to  get  it  finished  too,"  he  said  gloomily. 

"Well,  I'm  not  going  to  let  you  rewrite  it,  in  any  case," 
was  Betty's  firm  decision;  and  Jacob  was  relieved  by  the 
feeling  that  he  was  no  longer  under  any  obligation  to  his 
conscience. 

"I  believe  it's  the  right  thing  to  do,"  he  said,  by  way  of 
finally  demonstrating  his  willingness  to  undertake  the  im- 
possible task. 

Once,  in  a  moment  of  despair,  he  suggested  that  "John 
Tristram"  should  be  put  on  one  side  for  a  time,  and  that  he 
should  begin  the  story  of  the  man  who  reacted  so  readily 
to  his  circumstances.  It  was  a  solution  that  naturally  ap- 
pealed to  him,  the  way  out  he  had  always  adopted.  In  this, 


ACHIEVEMENT  297 

as  in  other  things,  he  longed  to  put  the  past  away  from  him 
and  begin  afresh. 

"And  waste  all  that  you  have  written?"  asked  Betty  in 
horror. 

"N-no,"  replied  Jacob,  fully  conscious  now  of  the  dis- 
honesty of  his  suggestion.  "It  wouldn't  be  wasted  in  any 
case.  It — it  has  been  training  for  me — taught  me  something 
about  writing." 

Betty  stared  at  him  in  astonishment ;  she  found  it  difficult 
to  grasp  the  fact  that  he  could  be  in  earnest.  "Do  you  mean 
to  say  that  you  wouldn't  publish  ' John  Tristram'  at  all  ?"  she 
insisted. 

"Well,  not  just  yet,"  he  prevaricated,  quite  evidently 
afraid  of  her  just  indignation. 

Betty  shrugged  her  shoulders. 

"Don't  take  it  like  that,  dear,"  he  pleaded.  "You  know 
what  my  difficulty  is."  A  possible  excuse  occurred  to  him. 
"I — I  might  go  on  working  at  'Tristram'  in  the  intervals 
between  other  books,  you  know,"  he  said,  with  a  touch  of 
eagerness.  "Save  it  up  until  I'm  known  as  a  writer,  and 
then  publish  it  as  a  sort  of  magnum  opus.  It  would  stand 
a  much  better  chance  like  that." 

Betty's  face  expressed  utter  despair.  She  opened  her 
mouth  and  shut  it  again  without  speaking.  And  then  she 
stumbled  on  a  plan  which  finally  saved  the  situation.  "If 
you  are  going  to  make  a  life-work  of  it,  you  might  as  well 
publish  it  in  parts  as  you  go  along,"  she  said. 

Her  intention  was  ironical,  but  Jacob  was  suddenly  fired 
by  an  idea. 

"Of  course,  you  didn't  mean  that,"  he  said ;  "but  there's 
something  in  it,  all  the  same.  I  mean,  why  shouldn't  I  take 
'Tristram'  up  to  a  climax  of  some  sort,  and  let  that  end  this 
part  of  the  book  ?  I  might  write  an  epilogue,  or  something, 
to  explain  that  I  meant  to  go  on  with  him  later." 

"I  would  sooner  you  did  that  than  nothing,"  replied 
Betty,  who  had  not  as  yet  grasped  the  possibilities  of  the 
situation. 

"It's  only  a  logical  development  of   the   sequel   idea," 


298  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

Jacob  said,  searching  his  mind  for  a  precedent.  "And,  after 
all,  it  is  a  part  of  my  whole  theory  that  it's  absurd  to  end 
the  life-story  of  a  man  at  his  marriage,  or  at  any  other 
point  short  of  his  death  for  that  matter."  He  hesitated  a 
moment,  and  then  added:  "A  man  of  Tristram's  sort,  of 
course.  It  would  be  another  thing  if  he — crystallised,  about 
middle-age." 

And  once  this  possibility  of  his  escape  from  perplexity  had 
been  presented  to  him,  Jacob  became  enthusiastic  to  make 
use  of  it.  He  talked  it  all  over  with  Betty  at  considerable 
length,  and  soon  discovered  that  the  impending  climax  in 
Tristram's  career  was,  indeed,  a  natural  and  logical  halting- 
place  in  his  history. 

When  she  had  had  time  to  alter  her  conception  of  the 
book  as  a  whole,  Betty  began  to  lose  her  attitude  of  conces- 
sion, and  shared  something  of  his  excitement. 

Meredith  had  gone  back  to  Cornwall  at  the  beginning  of 
July,  but  Jacob  wrote  to  him  and  asked  his  advice  about  the 
extension  of  Tristram's  story  into  more  than  one  volume, 
and  also  as  to  choice  of  publisher. 

Meredith's  reply  was  not  encouraging  with  regard  to  the 
first  point — Betty  soon  overrode  his  opinion  in  that  respect 
— but  he  advised  his  own  publisher  as  likely,  at  least,  to 
consider  the  scheme. 

And  in  face  of  all  difficulties,  the  truncated  story  of  John 
Tristram  was  completed  by  the  beginning  of  September. 


ii 

/ 
While  the  manuscript  was  at  the  typist's,  Jacob  wrote  a 

careful  letter  to  Bailey  and  Williams,  Meredith's  publishers. 
He  knew  that  this  preliminary  was  unnecessary,  but  he 
wanted  to  prepare  his  way  for  his  book's  reception.  He 
felt  that  this  method  of  approach  was  slightly  more  dignified 
and  literary  than  that  of  dumping  his  goods  on  the  counter 
like  a  commercial  traveller. 

Now  that  the  book  was  finished — and  even  at  that  mo- 
ment being  read,  no  doubt,  by  a  diligent  typist  who  might  be 


ACHIEVEMENT  299 

intelligent  enough  to  appreciate  it — he  was  conscious  of  a 
strong  desire  to  explain  its  relation  to  himself  and  to  the 
average  novel.  It  was  not,  he  wished  to  say — and  did  say 
repeatedly  to  Betty — so  much  a  novel  as  an  experiment  in 
fiction,  and  it  was  only  after  long  argument  on  the  evils  of 
self-deprecation  that  Betty  persuaded  him  to  omit  this  ex- 
planation from  his  letter  to  Bailey  and  Williams. 

Their  prompt  answer,  with  the  stereotyped  expression  of 
the  pleasure  they  anticipated  from  the  reading  of  his  book, 
raised  his  spirits  for  a  time.  It  seemed  to  him  that  that 
perfectly  orthodox  letter  conveyed  some  particular  regard 
for  his  work,  whether  because  he  was  &  friend  of  Meredith's, 
or  because,  as  he  hoped,  Bailey  and  Williams  had  learned  in 
some  way  of  his  connection  with  the  reviewing  staff  of  the 
Daily  Post.  He  pictured  a  keen  and  inquiring  firm  of  pub- 
lishers, who  made  it  their  business  to  seek  out  literary  talent. 
Betty,  even  more  innocent  still,  did  not  disguise  her  cer- 
tainty that  that  letter  was  prompted  by  knowledge  of  Jacob's 
ability. 

A  reaction  came  when  he  received  the  neat  and  legible 
typescript,  together  with  a  bill  for  £g  95.  3d.  The  latter 
scared  him  only  for  a  moment,  but  the  remarkably  altered 
version  of  his  work  took  all  the  confidence  out  of  him.  The 
original  manuscript,  with  its  dirty,  dog's-eared  front  pages, 
was  a  history  not  only  of  John  Tristram's,  but  also  of  a 
fragment  of  Jacob's  own  life.  Differences  in  the  handwrit- 
ing, alterations  in  the  text,  certain  smudges  and  blots,  an 
occasional  spot  of  grease — all  these  were  indications  of  his 
own  moods  and  of  the  conditions  in  which  he  had  written. 
Those  marks  recalled  to  him  the  visions  that  he  had  so  often 
failed  to  express.  This  disgustingly  frank  typescript  had 
no  character ;  it  exposed  every  weakness  of  his  phraseology 
with  hideous  unconcern;  it  was  like  some  mechanical  re- 
production of  a  pencil  drawing,  displaying  the  outline,  and 
missing  every  shade  of  feeling. 

He  gave  up  hope  as  he  laboured  over  the  task  of  correct- 
ing it.  (He  had  been  wrong  about  the  idealised  typist;  she 
was  not  intelligent.  Some  of  her  mistakes  made  him  blush 


300  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

with  shame.  What  could  she  have  thought  of  him,  to  im- 
agine that  he  could  write  such  dreadful  banalities  as  some 
of  those  she  had  read  into  his  work?  "He  sat,  his  face 
towards  the  village  .  .  ."  he  read,  and  groaned  as  he  altered 
it  to  "He  set  his  face  towards  the  village.  .  .  .")  But  he 
hid  his  despair  from  Betty.  He  knew  now  that  the  book  was 
amateurish — the  worst  word  he  could  find — inconsecutive ; 
badly,  clumsily  written ;  but  it  would  be  a  waste  of  energy 
to  argue  with  Betty  about  it ;  a  piece  of  unnecessary  cruelty 
if  he  could  succeed  in  disillusioning  her.  The  book  must 
go  to  Bailey  and  Williams,  and  he  consoled  himself  with 
the  thought  that  he  would,  in  all  probability,  never  meet  any 
member  of  that  well-known  firm.  They  might  smile  at  his 
temerity  in  submitting  such  a  hopeless  effort  at  novel-writ- 
ing, but  he  would  not  actually  see  any  evidence  of  their 
contempt  or  pity. 

His  mood  changed  again  when  the  manuscript  had  been 
sent  off  and  he  had  received  an  acknowledgment  of  its  re- 
ceipt by  a  postcard,  which  also  informed  him  that  Bailey 
and  Williams  would  not  hold  themselves  responsible  for 
loss  of  the  manuscript  by  fire  or  other  disaster.  He  looked 
back  on  the  story  now  with  faint  approval,  and  was  willing 
once  more  to  draw  confidence  from  Betty.  He  could  not 
believe  her  more  daring  prophecies,  but  he  began  to  hope 
for  acceptance. 

They  decided  that  they  would  expect  no  answer  for  at 
least  a  week.  Jacob,  with  an  air  of  knowledge,  explained 
that  a  fortnight  was  the  minimum.  But  both  of  them  were 
secretly  excited  by  every  postman's  knock  long  before  the 
stipulated  seven  days  had  gone  by.  No  open  reference  was 
made  to  their  perfervent  anticipations,  and  when  the  knock 
came  at  the  front  door  of  their  own  house,  Jacob  would 
stroll  out  of  the  room  and  go  downstairs  with  an  exagger- 
ated assumption  of  indifference,  and,  returning,  would  ap- 
pear to  overlook  Betty's  quick'  glance  at  his  face  as  he  en- 
tered the  room.  There  was  no  need  for  her  to  ask  any 
question ;  that  one  glance  was  sufficient  for  her. 

"Only  a  circular  for  the  chap  downstairs,"  was  a  dis- 


ACHIEVEMENT  301 

tressing  report  to  bring;  but  they  could  not  achieve  any 
sort  of  contentment  until  they  knew  for  certain  that  their 
fate  was  not  yet  pronounced;  impossible  for  them  to  sit 
at  ease  while  that  all-important  missive  might  be  lying  on  the 
mat  inside  their  front  door. 

Nevertheless,  they  wearied  of  expectation  before  the  letter 
came.  Some  tired  sense  in  them  failed  at  last  to  respond  to 
the  stimulus  of  a  double-knock.  At  the  end  of  a  fortnight, 
Jacob  was  refusing  to  go  downstairs  for  any  post  arriving 
between  breakfast  and  nine  o'clock  at  night. 

"It's  bound  to  come  by  one  or  other  of  those,"  he  ex- 
plained, and  instanced  his  own  knowledge  of  business 
methods.  "We  only  posted  our  letters  once  a  day  when  I 
was  at  Price  and  Mallinson's,"  he  argued.  "I  dictated  them 
in  the  morning,  and  they  were  brought  to  me  to  sign  at 
five  o'clock.  If  it  was  urgent,  we  wired  or  telephoned.  And 
this  letter  certainly  wouldn't  seem  urgent  to  Bally  Williams" 
— their  usual  degradation  of  the  firm's  style — "whichever 
way  they  answered." 

Betty  thought  the  delay  might  be  a  good  sign.  Jacob, 
with  a  rather  deliberate  pessimism,  thought  it  might  be  a 
bad  one. 

"Why  don't  you  begin  that  other  book?"  Betty  asked 
one  day,  nearly  a  fortnight  after  John  Tristram  had  gone 
out  on  his  first  adventure.  "You've  plenty  of  time  now." 

"I  don't  know,"  Jacob  said.  "It  hardly  seems  worth 
while  till  I've  learnt  the  fate  of  the  first." 

"Why  not?"  she  returned;  and  he  hesitated  to  declare 
that  if  the  first  were  refused,  he  would  never  write  another. 

"What  difference  does  that  make?"  she  persisted.  "If 
this  publisher  refuses  it,  another  won't." 

"You  think  they  will  refuse  it,  then?"  he  put  in. 

"Don't  be  so  silly!"  Betty  said.  "I  don't  think  so  for  a 
minute,  but  I  can't  see  why  you  shouldn't  begin  the  next." 

Jacob  knew  that  there  was  no  reason,  unless  he  confessed 
that  he  was  prepared  for  final  discouragement  by  one  re- 
fusal. 

She  returned  to  the  subject  at  breakfast  the  next  morning, 


THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

and  encouraged  him  to  discuss  the  detail  of  his  projected 
fantasy,  and  Jacob  discovered  then  that  in  the  interval  that 
had  elapsed  since  their  dinner  at  the  Holborn  the  story  had 
been  maturing  in  the  secret  places  of  his  mind.  All  sorts  of 
new  and,  as  it  seemed  to  him,  entertaining  aspects  of  the 
idea  bubbled  up  spontaneously — even  a  title. 

"I  might  call  it  'The  Creature  of  Circumstance,' "  he 
suggested. 

Betty  approved  the  suggestion. 

And  after  breakfast  he  sat  down  with  the  ostensible  pur- 
pose of  making  a  few  notes.  He  would,  he  said,  plan  his 
book  carefully,  weigh  its  construction  and  proportions  in 
advance.  But  when  he  came  out  eagerly  into  the  little 
kitchen  at  half-past  twelve,  he  had  made  no  notes.  The 
opening  chapter,  he  explained,  had  been  so  vividly  in  his 
mind  that  he  had  begun  it  at  once,  and  wanted  now  to  read 
the  first  considerable  instalment  to  Betty  without  a  moment's 
delay. 

"I've  done  just  over  fifteen  hundred  words,"  he  an- 
nounced with  enthusiasm;  "and  really,  do  you  know,  I 
think  it's  rather  good." 

Their  enthusiasm  for  the  new  book  was  maintained  at 
high  pitch  for  the  next  twelve  days,  and  their  anticipation 
of  Bailey  and  Williams's  reply  waned  in  proportion,  so  that 
when  at  last,  nearly  a  month  after  the  manuscript  had  been 
sent  out,  the  fateful  letter  appeared  on  the  breakfast-table 
one  morning,  Jacob  opened  it  without  realising  that  this 
was  the  message  he  had  so  tremblingly  desired  three  weeks 
before. 

"By  Jove!  this  is  it;  it's  from  old  bally  Bill!"  he  ex- 
claimed, as  he  caught  sight  of  the  notepaper  heading. 

"Well,  what  do  they  say?"  asked  Betty  excitedly,  her 
eyes  on  his  face.  "Read  it  aloud,  dear."  She  stretched  out 
her  hand  as  if  to  take  the  letter  from  him. 

"It's  no  go,"  Jacob  said,  and  read : 

'"DEAR  MR.  STAHL'"  (the  less  formal  mode  of  address  was  no 
doubt  due  to  Meredith's  introduction), 


ACHIEVEMENT  303 

"'I  am  sorry  to  say  that  we  find  we  are  unable  to  undertake 
the  publication  of  your  book.  It  has  been  sent  to  two  readers,  and 
in  each  case  the  opinion  is  not  sufficiently  favourable  to  justify  our 
taking  up  the  book.  So  far  as  I  can  gather,  the  book  would  have 
had  a  very  fair  chance  of  success  a  few  years  ago,  but  nowadays  the 
competition  is  so  strong  that  your  book's  chance  is  greatly  reduced. 
I  am  returning  the  manuscript  to  you,  and,  with  very  many  thanks 
for  letting  me  consider  it, 

"  'Yours  very  truly, 

"  'per  pro  BAILEY  AND  WILLIAMS, 

"  'STANLEY  WILLIAMS.'  " 

"Hardly  what  you'd  call  a  literary  letter,"  remarked 
Jacob.  "Four  'books'  in  eight  lines,  and  something  integral 
seems  to  have  been  omitted  from  that  last  sentence." 

Betty  took  the  letter  from  him  and  read  it  to  herself. 
"What  do  they  mean  by  saying  'the  book  would  have 
had  a  very  fair  chance  of  success  a  few  years  ago'?"  she 
asked. 

"Old-fashioned,  I  suppose,"  Jacob  returned,  conscious 
that  he  was  being  very  brave  and  careless.  "Oh,  well,  it's 
no  go,  dear.  I  never  had  much  confidence  in  'John  Tris- 
tram/ to  tell  you  the  truth.  Let's  forget  it,  and  go  on  with 
'The  Creature  of  Circumstance.'  I  do  think  that  that's  com- 
ing out  rather  well.  I  believe  in  that,  I  do,  really." 

"What  was  the  name  of  that  new  publisher  you  men- 
tioned the  other  day?"  asked  Betty.  "Norman  something. 
You  said  he  was  publishing  rather  good  stuff." 

"Norman  Goodrich,"  Jacob  said.     "Why?" 

"Well,  the  first  thing  you  do  after  breakfast,"  said 
Betty,  "is  to  sit  down  and  ask  him  if  he  will  read  'John 
Tristram.' " 

Jacob  flushed  slightly.    "Is  it  any  good  ?"  he  asked. 

''If  you  don't  write  to  him,  I  shall,"  replied  Betty.  "And 
if  he  won't  have  it,  it  shall  go  to  Methuen's  and  .  .  .  and 
Macmillan's,  and  every  publisher  in  London,  if  necessary. 
I'm  perfectly  certain  that  'John  Tristram'  is  going  to  be  a 
big  success.  Good  gracious !  haven't  you  often  told  me  that 
all  the  best  novels  have  been  refused  by  publishers  at  least 
once?  I  think  you  ought  to  be  rather  glad  that  yours  has 


304  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

been  refused  too.  If  it  had  been  trash,  they  would  have 
accepted  it  directly." 

"You  darling!"  Jacob  said. 

"Well,  will  you  write  to  Norman  What's-his-name  ?" 

"Rather.  Anything  on  earth  to  avoid  these  dreadful 
scenes,"  said  Jacob,  laughing. 

"You  are — so — hopeless,"  Betty  emphatically  advised 
him.  "You  give  in  at  the  first  little  thing  that  goes  wrong." 

"I — will — write — to — Norman — Goodrich,"  Jacob  as- 
serted, still  smiling. 

"And  I  suppose  if  you'd  been  alone,  you  would  never 
have  looked  at  'John  Tristram'  again?" 

"Probably  not." 

Betty  glanced  at  him  with  a  pretence  of  scorn  and 
shrugged  her  shoulders. 

"It  wouldn't  be  worth  while  if  I  hadn't  got  you,"  he  ex- 
plained. 

in 

His  first  letter  to  Norman  Goodrich  was  censured  out  of 
existence.  A  self-conscious  honesty  had  influenced  him  to 
quite  unnecessary  explanations  concerning  the  book's  re- 
fusal by  Bailey  and  Williams,  and  the  peculiarity  of  the 
experiment  in  fiction  he  was  attempting. 

Betty  had  insisted  that  she  must  read  the  letter  before  it 
was  sent.  She  read  it  in  ominous  silence,  and  then  pulled  a 
chair  up  to  the  sitting-room  table  and  sat  down. 

"I  thought  you  had  been  in  business,"  was  her  first  com- 
ment. 

Jacob  looked  uncomfortable  and  ruffled  his  hair.  "I'm 
not  going  to  do  anything  under  false  pretences,"  he  said. 

"You're  not  going  to  send  this  letter,"  replied  Betty 
firmly. 

Jacob  took  it  from  her,  read  it  through  again,  and  then, 
with  a  spurt  of  temper,  tore  it  up.  "I  don't  know  that  I 
shall  write  at  all,"  he  said  crossly. 

Betty  smiled.  "You  know  you've  been  silly,"  she  re- 
marked. 


ACHIEVEMENT  305 

"Is  it  silly  to  be  honest  ?"  he  retorted. 

"It  isn't  a  question  of  honesty,"  Betty  said.  "It's  simply 
a  matter  of  business." 

"Well,  I  loathe  business,"  returned  Jacob.  "I  always 
did.  I  hate  the  methods  of  business ;  they're  not  honest. 
It's  all  an  attempt  to  take  advantage  of  someone  else's  igno- 
rance." 

"Didn't  you  say  that  Norman  Goodrich  had  published 
some  very  good  books  ?"  asked  Betty.  "Very  well,  then ; 
can't  you  trust  them  to  give  an  opinion  on  yours  without 
prejudicing  them  against  it  to  start  with?" 

Jacob  moved  uneasily  and  ruffled  his  hair  still  further. 

"It  doesn't  matter  what  Bailey  and  Williams  think  of  the 
book,  or  what  you  think  of  it,"  Betty  continued ;  "we  want  to 
know  what  Mr.  Goodrich  thinks  of  it.  You  wouldn't  preju- 
dice him  in  its  favour,  so  why  prejudice  him  against  it?" 

"Well,  what  sort  of  letter  would  you  write?"  Jacob's 
tone  was  distinctly  ungracious  still. 

"I  should  say  that  you'd  often  reviewed  the  books  he  had 
published,  and  that  you  have  liked  them,  and  think  'John 
Tristram'  will  appeal  to  him." 

"Isn't  that  trying  to  prejudice  him  in  its  favour?" 

"I'll  write  it  for  you  if  you  find  it  too  much  for  your 
conscience,"  replied  Betty.  "But  it  seems  to  me  that  that's 
the  exact  truth.  Isn't  it  true?  If  you're  sure  he  won't  like 
the  book,  we'd  better  not  send  it." 

"I  suppose  you're  right,"  remarked  Jacob,  after  a  thought- 
ful pause. 

She  put  out  her  hand  to  him,  and  he  took  it  and  kissed  it. 

"That  first  letter  was  rather  silly,  now,  wasn't  it?"  she 
persisted. 

"Do  you  wish  I  were  a  business  man?"  he  asked. 

"No.  Thank  goodness,  you're  not!"  she  said.  "But 
you  are  rather  a  troublesome  baby  sometimes." 

The  prompt  reply  that  he  received  to  his  amended  appli- 
cation was  signed  "C.  Norman,"  and  contained  a  statement 
to  the  effect  that  the  firm  would  be  pleased  to  read  Mr. 
Stahl's  book,  even  if  it  were  not  in  typescript.  Betty  and 


306  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

Jacob  seemed  to  have  some  little  justification  this  time  in 
assuming  a  peculiar  interest,  and  more  particularly  as  the 
reply  was  received  on  the  evening  of  the  same  day. 

"Pretty  quick  work,"  Jacob  thought,  and  added:  "The 
bally  manuscript  hasn't  come  back  yet." 

"You  are  really  a  very  wonderful  person,"  he  said. 

"What's  the  use  of  wasting  time  over  a  thing  when  it  has 
got  to  be  done  ?"  she  replied,  conscious,  perhaps,  of  a  slight 
satisfaction  with  her  own  efficiency.  And  when  the  manu- 
script returned,  next  morning,  she  took  upon  herself  the 
business  of  repacking  and  redirecting  it,  and  of  sending  it 
off  by  registered  post. 

When  she  returned,  Jacob  told  her  how  in  his  earlier 
days  he  had  seldom  had  the  courage  to  send  out  again  a 
short  story  that  had  been  once  refused.  "I  preferred  to  sit 
down  and  write  another,"  he  concluded. 

"It's  a  good  thing  you've  got  me  to  look  after  you,"  was 
Betty's  comment. 

Jacob  endorsed  that  statement  with  fervour.  .  .  . 

They  were  prepared  by  experience  for  a  further  delay 
of  at  least  three  weeks,  and  Jacob's  interest  being  still  ab- 
sorbed by  the  development  of  his  new  book,  he  suffered 
no  such  restlessness  and  incapacity  to  work  as  had  upset 
him  on  the  first  occasion.  The  new  book  was,  in  his  own 
words,  "going  splendidly."  He  was  astonished  at  the  ease 
with  which  the  development  of  the  story  came  to  him,  and 
grudged  the  time  he  must  necessarily  devote  to  filling  the 
literary  columns  of  the  Daily  Post.  "John  Tristram"  had 
slipped  into  the  background  of  his  attention;  he  had  come 
to  regard  that  work  as  a  second  string,  or  as  a  means  for 
providing  a  little  pleasant  excitement. 

The  manuscript  had  been  despatched  to  Norman  Good- 
rich on  a  Tuesday,  and  Jacob  was  somewhat  depressed  the 
following  Monday  by  his  contemplation  of  the  unusually 
large  parcel  of  books  that  was  set  aside  for  him  during 
the  afternoon  conclave  at  the  Daily  Post  offices.  The  de- 
velopment of  his  new  novel  was  so  absorbingly  interesting. 
Even  in  the  editor's  room  he  had  found  his  thoughts  stray- 


ACHIEVEMENT  307 

ing.  The  story  of  "John  Tristram"  had  never  held  him 
like  this.  And  yet  Betty  was  undoubtedly  less  interested 
in  "The  Creature,"  as  they  usually  called  it,  than  in  the 
first  book. 

He  was  debating  this  curious  perversion  of  literary  taste 
as  he  descended  the  stairs,  and  then,  looking  down  into  the 
entrance-lobby,  he  was  amazed  to  see  Betty  herself  waiting 
there  for  him. 

"What  on  earth  .  .  ."  he  began,  half  in  dismay,  as  he 
hurried  across  to  join  her. 

"They've  accepted  it,"  she  said  in  an  eager  whisper,  and 
took  his  arm,  to  the  great  interest  of  the  commissionaire, 
who  immediately  jumped  to  the  conclusion  that  Jacob  had 
been  "nicely  caught  this  time." 

"It  came  ten  minutes  after  you'd  gone,"  she  went  on 
breathlessly,  as  they  went  out,  "and  I  simply  couldn't  wait. 
Of  course,  I  opened  it.  I  knew  what  it  was." 

"What  do  they  say?"  asked  Jacob. 

She  produced  a  rather  crumpled  letter  from  the  pocket 
of  her  jacket,  and  Jacob  backed  up  against  a  shop-front  and 
read  the  wonderful  tidings,  facing  the  urgent  traffic  of  Fleet 
Street. 

The  letter  was  quite  short. 

"DEAR  SIR, 

"If  you  could  make  it  convenient  to  call  here  on  Thursday  morn- 
ing, I  should  be  glad  to  see  you  with  reference  to  your  novel 
'John  Tristram.'  If  that  time  is  not  possible,  will  you  kindly  suggest 
another  ? 

"Yours  faithfully, 
"For  and  on  behalf  of  Norman  Goodrich,  Ltd., 

"C  NORMAN." 

Jacob  folded  up  the  letter  and  put  it  in  his  pocket. 
"Aren't  you  excited?"  asked  Betty,  with  a  shade  of  dis- 
appointment in  her  face  and  voice. 

"Let's  go  and  have  tea  somewhere.  I  wonder  where 
we  could  be  quiet?"  Jacob  said,  looking  vaguely  up  and 
down  Fleet  Street. 

He  felt  immensely  elated,  and  yet  tranquil.    He  could  not 


308  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

bring  himself  to  any  ordinary  expression  of  pleasure.  This 
was  the  attainment,  he  thought,  of  a  life's  ambition,  and  he 
wanted  to  contemplate  the  marvel  of  it  in  silence,  holding 
Betty's  hand.  Smaller  achievement  might  be  emphasised 
by  outward  demonstrations  of  rapture;  this  was  too  great 
a  thing  for  any  conventional  glorying — it  was  sufficient 
without  that. 

But  as  they  searched  for  the  promise  of  quiet  in  a  Fleet 
Street  tea-shop,  he  began  to  criticise  his  own  elation.  After 
all,  more  than  a  thousand  novels  were  published  every 
year,  the  overwhelming  majority  of  them  beneath  contempt. 
His  was  only  one  more  added  to  the  many  disastrous  es- 
says in  fiction. 

He  looked  down  at  Betty.  He  meant  to  belittle  his 
achievement,  but  the  sight  of  her  elation  checked  him.  If 
he  were  only  one  among  a  thousand,  he  might,  at  least, 
honestly  enjoy  his  triumph  with  her.  She  had  no  doubts 
or  misgivings.  Why  should  he  for  ever  depreciate  his  own 
abilities  and  prospects? 

"It's — it's  immense,"  he  said. 

"I  always  knew  it  was  going  to  be  a  success,"  she  re- 
turned. "Do  say  you're  excited." 

"I  am,  dear — of  course  I  am — tremendously,"  he  said, 
and  checked  his  inclination  to  point  out  the  difference  be- 
tween acceptance  and  success.  Why  could  he  not  let  him- 
self go?  he  wondered.  It  was  as  if  there  were  some 
indefinable  thing  that  he  was  afraid  of,  some  altitude  of 
self-confidence  or  certainty  from  which  he  instinctively 
shrank. 

But  when  they  had  discovered  a  conveniently  remote 
corner  in  the  blankly  unattractive  basement  of  a  tea-shop 
opposite  the  Law  Courts,  he  found  a  compromise  between 
his  own  hesitations  and  his  desire  to  please  Betty. 

"This  makes  me  keener  than  ever  on  the  next  book,"  he 
said.  "I  do  honestly  believe  in  that." 

"I  believe  in  this  one,"  replied  Betty. 

"I  wish  I  had  your  confidence,"  said  Jacob  thought- 
fully. "I  don't  mean  in  this  book  particularly — in  myself." 


ACHIEVEMENT  309 

"I  shouldn't  like  you  to  be  too  confident,"  said  Betty 
surprisingly.  "It  wouldn't  be  you,"  she  added,  by  way  of 
explanation. 

The  need  to  explain  himself  could  be  denied  no  longer. 
"Let  me  tell  you  how  I  feel  about  it,"  he  said.  He  was 
warm  with  exultation,  both  in  the  knowledge  that  his  novel 
had,  almost  certainly,  been  accepted,  and  in  the  fact  that 
he  was  so  sure  of  a  sympathetic  listener.  His  success  was 
Betty's  also.  Their  interests  were  so  indissoluble. 

"Go  on,  darling,"  she  said. 

"You  see,  this  is  my  form  of  giving  vent  to  excitement," 
he  began.  "I'm  stimulated  to  a  sort  of  self-realisation.  And 
it  is  so  glorious  to  be  able  to  say  it  all  to  you,  and  know 
you'll  understand." 

"Even  now  you're  apologising,"  she  said,  smiling. 

"I  always  do,  I  always  shall,"  affirmed  Jacob.  "I  can't 
ever  be  quite  sure  enough  about  anything  not  to  hesitate 
about  it.  Sometimes  I  think  it's  a  good  thing  to  be  like 
that — for  me,  anyhow;  it  wouldn't  do  for  a  Cabinet  Min- 
ister, or  a  General,  or  a  parson,  I  admit.  But  about  writ- 
ing, dear;  I  do  have  moments  of  quite  extraordinary  con- 
fidence before  the  book,  or  whatever  it  is,  is  finished.  About 
this  next  book,  for  instance,  I  think  sometimes  that  it's  go- 
ing to  be  great — I  do  really.  But  I  can't  delude  myself 
about  a  thing  when  it's  done,  and  I  should  be  afraid  to 
say  so  to  anyone  but  you,  because  it  looks  so  like  false 
modesty;  pretending  to  run  down  your  own  stuff  has  the 
air  of  fishing  for  compliments.  But  I  do  know  about 
'John  Tristram,'  for  instance,  that  although  it  has  got 
some  good  work  in  it  of  a  sort,  that  it  isn't  in  any  sense 
a  great  book.  Yes,  I  dare  say  you  think  so,  but  it  isn't, 
dear,  really  it  isn't.  And  I  don't  want  to  think  it  is,  even 
when  I  am  alone  with  you.  I  don't  mind  making  up  fairy 
tales  about  it,  talking  of  tenth  editions  and  things  like 
that;  but  I  should  hate  to  think  that  'John  Tristram'  was 
the  best  thing  I  could  do;  and  in  some  way  I  should  hate 
even  to  be  satisfied  with  my  own  writing."  He  paused  a 


310  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

moment,  and  added :  "Not  that  there  is  the  least  chance  of 
it." 

"Aren't  you  satisfied  with  The  Creature'?"  asked  Betty. 

"I'm  excited  about  it  now,"  replied  Jacob.  "I  dare  say 
I  shall  hate  it  when  it's  finished." 

"I  wonder  if  you'll  ever  get  tired  of  me?"  said  Betty, 
with  apparent  irrelevance. 

"Hardly  the  same  thing,  is  it?"  asked  Jacob,  laughing. 

"I'm  not  sure,"  Betty  said. 

"But,  darling,  it's  only  the  things  I  do  myself  that  I  feel 
like  that  about,"  he  expostulated. 

"Well,  but  isn't  it  because  you  get  tired  of  them?" 

"Surely  not,"  Jacob  remonstrated;  but  in  his  own  mind 
he  was  not  absolutely  sure  that  fatigue  had  not  something 
to  do  with  the  disgust  he  felt  for  his  own  writing  after 
it  was  done. 

"It's  so  absolutely  different,"  he  explained.  "I'll  admit 
that  I  do  get  tired  of  people  too;  but  you  .  .  .  you're  my 
complement,  you're  so  inevitable  .  .  .  you're  wife  and  sister 
and  mother  and  intimate  friend  all  in  one.  Do  you  know 
what  I  mean?" 

She  nodded,  conscious  that  he  had  been  too  explanatory. 
He  was  finding  words  for  their  relationship  now;  a  year 
ago  he  had  been  inarticulate,  but  more  convincing.  She 
did  not  doubt  him,  she  knew  that  his  need  for  her  was 
overwhelming,  but  she  recognised  a  difference  in  his  feel- 
ing for  her.  He  was  more  tender  and  less  passionate  than 
he  had  been  before  she  went  to  Cornwall.  His  present 
attitude  was  that  she  had  once  wished  to  find  him  in,  and 
now  she  missed  the  very  quality  she  used  to  deprecate. 

"Of  course,  I  know,  dear,"  she  said  fondly.  "Am  I  really 
all  that  to  you  ?" 

"Much,  much  more  than  that,"  he  responded.  "I 
shouldn't  have  cared  a  hang  about  this  book  being  taken, 
if  it  weren't  for  you.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  I  should  never 
have  finished  it,  of  course." 


ACHIEVEMENT  311 

IV 

They  were  just  preparing  to  go,  when  Jacob  recognised 
an  acquaintance  a  few  tables  away  from  them. 

"Hallo!"  he  said  softly.  "Do  you  see  that  chap  in  the 
top-hat,  Betty?  Down  the  room  on  the  right-hand  side?" 

"Yes.     Do  you  know  him?"  she  asked. 

"Rather,"  remarked  Jacob,  with  a  subdued  emphasis.  "I 
used  to  be  envious  of  him  once.  We  were  in  the  same 
office,  writing  advertisements,  you  know;  and  he  was  the 
success  and  I  was  the  failure." 

"What's  his  name?"  Betty  said. 

"Farmer." 

"Are  you  going  to  speak  to  him?" 

"I  think  so;  why  not?" 

Betty  evidently  had  some  reserve  in  her  mind.  "I'll  go 
on,"  she  said. 

"Oh,  why?"  asked  Jacob.  "I  shall  only  just  say  some- 
thing as  we  go  by." 

"Did  he  ...  did  he  know  .  .  .  Lola  ?"  Betty  said,  with  a 
look  of  half-wistful  perplexity. 

"Oh,  Lord,  no!"  replied  Jacob  with  emphasis.  "It  was 
long  after  we  separated,  and  in  any  case  he  wouldn't  have 
known  her.  He  wasn't  the  sort  of  man  one  asked  to  din- 
ner, I  mean." 

"I  don't  think  I  want  to  know  him  either,"  Betty  said. 

"How  funny  of  you,"  commented  Jacob;  "but  it  doesn't 
matter." 

He  was  a  little  vexed.  Here  was  the  very  contretemps 
he  had  pictured :  the  opportunity  to  make  his  little  boast 
of  success  before  one  who  had  known  him  as  an  unsuc- 
cessful writer  of  advertisements. 

"There's  no  reason  why  you  shouldn't  speak  to  him," 
Betty  said,  noticing  Jacob's  petulance. 

"Why  are  you  so  afraid  of  being  introduced  ?"  he  asked. 

"I'm  not  I  don't  see  what  good  it  is,  that's  all.  We 
shall  probably  never  see  him  again,",  replied  Betty.  She 
could  not  have  defined  her  reason  for  wishing  to  avoid 


312  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

this  association  with  Jacob's  past,  but  she  was  quite  de- 
termined that  she  would  avoid  Mr.  Farmer.  She  could 
not  face  a  formal  introduction  to  him  as  Jacob's  wife.  She 
felt,  despite  all  Jacob's  assurances  that  Farmer  had  never 
known  Lola,  that  in  some  subtle  way  he  must  guess  that 
her  own  relations  with  Jacob  were  irregular.  And  this 
strange  Mr.  Farmer  was  not  an  attractive  person.  He  was 
rather  stout,  seedily  overdressed,  and  he  had  a  coarse,  com- 
mon face.  He  was  not  the  sort  of  man,  she  thought,  that 
Jacob  ought  ever  to  have  been  familiar  with. 

"You  stop  and  speak  to  him,  dear;  I'll  go  on,"  she 
said.  She  rose  and  picked  up  the  little  white  ticket  from 
the  dirty,  marble-topped  table.  "I'll  wait  for  you  outside," 
she  added. 

"I  can't  understand  why  .  .  ."  began  Jacob,  but  she  only 
smiled  at  him  and  went  out.  Mr.  Farmer  stared  at  her 
as  she  passed  him. 

Jacob  had  mislaid  a  glove,  and  by  the  time  he  found  it, 
pressed  into  the  crumb-stored  fold  between  the  back  and 
the  seat  of  the  American-cloth  covered  settee  on  which 
they  had  been  sitting,  Betty  was  half-way  up  the  stairs. 
He  followed  her  with  a  self-sacrificing  determination  to 
cut  Farmer  dead.  He  did  not  know  why  he  should,  but  he 
believed  that  for  some  strange  reason  Betty  desired  this 
abnegation. 

But  Mr.  Farmer  was  not  an  easy  person  to  cut. 

"Hello!"  he  said,  as  Jacob,  with  a  studiously  distracted 
air,  prepared  to  pass.  "Hello,  Stoll!"  he  repeated,  and 
leaned  over  the  table  and  drew  Jacob's  attention  by  prod- 
ding him  with  an  umbrella. 

"Hallo,  Farmer!     I  didn't  see  you,"  lied  Jacob. 

"Not  grown  any  thinner  either,"  remarked  Farmer. 
"Where  you  been  all  this  time?  And  who's  the  lady?" 

Jacob  blushed.  "That  was  my  wife  who  just  went  out," 
he  said. 

Mr.  Farmer  twisted  his  short  neck  in  an  effort  to  look 
up  the  stairs.  "Gone  in  for  the  holy  state,  have  you?"  he 
said.  "So've  I,  worse  luck." 


ACHIEVEMENT  313 

Jacob  could  find  no  answer  to  this,  short  of  an  elaborate 
explanation  of  his  own  happiness ;  so  he  changed  the  con- 
versation by  saying:  "What  are  you  doing  now?" 

"Gone  back  to  the  old  shop,  for  the  time  being,"  replied 
Farmer.  "But  I've  got  a  big  thing  on.  However,  can't 
tell  you  about  that  just  yet.  You'll  hear  of  it  before  long. 
What  you  doing?  Anything  particular?" 

This  was  the  opportunity  Jacob  had  pictured,  but  he 
felt  that  just  as  it  was  impossible  to  explain  his  happiness 
in  Betty  to  Farmer,  so  would  it  be  not  less  futile  to  boast 
of  any  literary  success.  He  realised  it  instantly  as  he 
looked  at  the  rather  stout,  rather  shabbily  smart  man  be- 
fore him.  Farmer  would  want  to  know  whether  this  sort 
of  writing  "paid."  He  could  not  appreciate  the  glory  of 
having  a  novel  accepted,  and  in  any  case  he  would  cer- 
tainly write  down  half  of  any  possible  statement  as  brag. 

"Oh,  I'm  doing  all  right,"  Jacob  said,  and  added  quickly, 
"Well,  I  must  be  getting  on,  I'm  afraid.  My  wife  will  be 
waiting  for  me." 

Farmer  grinned.  "Like  that  already,  is  it?"  he  said. 
"Well,  so  long,  see  you  again  some  time.  You  look  out 
for  that  big  thing  of  mine  in  the  papers  just  after  Christ- 
mas." 

"Well,  did  you  speak  to  him?"  asked  Betty,  when  Jacob 
joined  her  in  the  Strand. 

"He  prodded  me  with  an  umbrella,"  Jacob  said. 

"Did  you  tell  him  about  your  book?" 

"No.  He  asked  who  you  were,  and  I  said  you  were  my 
wife,  and  he  then  remarked  that  he  was  married  too,  worse 
luck.  After  that  I  had  nothing  more  to  say  to  him  of  any 
kind.  Betty,  you  were  quite  right.  We  haven't  anything 
to  say  to  people  like  Farmer;  I  can't  begin  to  make  my- 
self understood  by  them.  Not  in  the  simplest  ways.  But 
how  did  you  know  ?" 

"I  didn't  know,"  Betty  said.  "I  only  felt  that  I  didn't 
want  to  be  introduced  to  him." 

"It  wasn't  because  you  are  still  afraid  of  meeting  people 
.  .  .  anyone?" 


314.  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

"No."  She  said  it  quite  readily  and  definitely,  but  she 
did  not  deceive  him.  Her  denial  had  the  same  quality  as 
those  earlier  reservations  in  Cornwall.  Jacob  made  no 
reply,  but  each  of  them  knew  with  illuminating  distinctness 
what  was  in  the  other's  mind.  He  was  on  the  verge  of 
another  protestation,  a  warning  that  she  must  conquer  this 
shrinking  of  hers ;  she  was  prepared  to  reply  that  she  must 
be  left  to  fight  the  thing  out  for  herself,  that  she  would 
"get  over  it  ...  in  time." 

They  held  the  suspense  for  a  few  moments,  each  fram- 
ing an  attitude,  as  clearly  conscious  of  the  old  argument 
as  if  the  dispute  was  fiercely  in  progress;  and  then  Jacob 
determinedly  relinquished  it.  It  was  true,  he  thought,  that 
she  must  win  her  way  to  confidence  by  her  own  effort;  he 
must  not  harry  her. 

The  possibility  of  a  graceful  escape  from  the  impending 
argument  was  provided  by  the  sight  of  a  grim  and  solid 
block  of  offices  a  few  yards  farther  down  the  Strand. 

"That's  Price  and  Mallinson's — my  old  place,"  said  Ja- 
cob, with  an  assumption  of  brisk  interest.  "Farmer  is  there 
still,  you  know." 

"Aren't  you  glad  to  be  out  of  it?"  asked  Betty,  with 
evident  relief. 

"My  goodness,  yes,"  Jacob  said  with  enthusiasm. 

The  recovery  was  finally  achieved  by  Betty  taking  his 
arm  and  asking  brightly:  "Who's  had  a  novel  accepted?" 

"We  have,"  returned  Jacob,  on  the  same  note  of  spright- 
liness. 

He  felt  as  if  they  had  had  a  quarrel  and  had  beautifully 
made  it  up  again. 


"I  don't  quite  know  where  we  are  going,"  remarked  Ja- 
cob presently.  "Couldn't  we  do  something — to  celebrate 
the  occasion?" 

'  "Oh,  let's  go  and  tell  Freda,"  suggested  Betty.    "She'll 
be  so  interested." 

"Do  you  think  she  will?"  asked  Jacob  doubtfully. 


ACHIEVEMENT  315 

He  had  not  seen  Freda  more  than  half  a  dozen  times 
during  the  past  six  months.  She  seemed  to  be  greatly  pre- 
occupied with  her  management  of  the  boarding-house,  and 
seldom  found  time  to  come  to  Great  Ormond  Street  in  the 
evening.  She  had  the  whole  affair  on  her  hands  now,  for 
Mrs.  Parmenter  had  gone  to  bed  one  day  at  the  end  of 
April,  and  had  remained  in  bed  ever  since.  She  had  defi- 
nitely announced  her  nearly  approaching  end  on  several 
occasions,  had  made  her  last  provisions  for  the  settlement 
of  her  affairs,  and  bidden  farewell  to  Freda  and  the  hastily- 
summoned  Betty.  And  after  each  solemn  leave-taking  she 
had  waked  the  next  morning,  distinctly  cheered  and  in- 
vigorated by  the  previous  evening's  excitement. 

Jacob  had  said  that  she  would  probably  go  on  for  years 
in  the  same  condition.  He  showed  no  generosity  of  spirit 
in  his  attitude  towards  Mrs.  Parmenter.  He  could  not 
forgive  her  libel  of  him.  He  was  bitter  enough  to  astonish 
Betty,  who  had  at  first  tried  to  reason  with  his  evident 
animus. 

"Poor  old  thing,  she's  so  old!"  had  been  her  attempted 
palliation  of  Mrs.  Parmenter's  fault. 

"Old  enough  to  be  a  little  more  charitable,"  Jacob  had 
snapped,  and  had  added :  "And  all  this  dying  business  once 
a  fortnight  annoys  me." 

"She  really  thinks  she's  dying,  dear,"  Betty  had  answered, 
and  Jacob  had  looked  scornful  disbelief. 

Nor  was  Freda  in  his  good  books.  He  believed  that  she 
doubted  and  suspected  him;  and  he  deprecated — although 
he  had  never  openly  expressed  his  displeasure — Betty's 
almost  daily  visit  to  Montague  Place  to  help  with  the  house- 
work. He  would  have  tried  to  dissuade  her  from  that 
occupation  if  he  had  not  seen  that  some  such  distraction 
was  necessary  for  her.  Their  own  little  suite  of  rooms 
was  soon  disposed  of.  They  had  agreed  that  Jacob's  at- 
tention must  not  be  distracted  during  the  morning  by  her 
presence  in  the  sitting-room ;  and  if  she  did  not  go  to  help 
at  Montague  Place,  what  was  there  for  her  to  do?  as  she 


316  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

put  it.  Her  temperament  so  obviously  demanded  an  em- 
ployment of  some  kind. 

In  his  mind  Jacob  gloriously  planned  an  extension  of 
their  own  resources,  that  should  allow  them  to  live  in  a 
flat  large  enough  to  provide  Betty  with  permanent  interest 
at  home.  He  deluded  himself  with  the  belief  that  he  con- 
sidered it  below  Betty's  dignity  to  help  in  the  boarding- 
house;  but  in  his  most  honest  moods  he  could  not  disguise 
the  fact  that  he  was  jealous  of  Betty's  intimacy  with  Freda 
Cairns,  as  she  now  frankly  called  herself. 

And  for  these  reasons  the  suggestion  that  they  should 
celebrate  the  occasion  of  "John  Tristram's"  acceptance  by 
carrying  the  news  to  Montague  Place  was  not  one  that 
aroused  his  enthusiasm. 

"I  don't  suppose  Freda  will  be  the  least  interested,"  he 
said. 

"You're  so  funny  about  Freda,"  returned  Betty.  "She's 
awfully  fond  of  you." 

"I  doubt  it,"  Jacob  said.    "I  doubt  it  quite  immensely." 

"I  know  she  is,"  was  Betty's  decided  answer. 

"You  think  everybody  likes  me." 

"I  don't!    I  know  Mrs.  Parmenter  doesn't." 

"You  can  tell  Freda  about  it  to-morrow  morning.  I've 
never  been  to  that  beastly  place  since  I  left  last  August." 

"I  don't  know  why  you  should  call  it  a  'beastly'  place. 
You  met  me  there,  anyhow." 

"And  took  you  away  from  it." 

"I  wish  you'd  come,"  persisted  Betty.    "I  want  you  to." 

They  had  reached  Charing  Cross  Post  Office  by  this 
time,  and  she  led  him  round  the  corner  and  stopped  to 
plead  her  cause  in  the  lee  of  the  railings  of  Morley's  Hotel. 

"We  can  take  a  bus  up  to  the  corner  of  Russell  Street, 
if  you  don't  want  to  walk  any  farther,"  she  said  by  way 
of  inducement. 

Jacob  smiled.  "That  doesn't  tempt  me,"  he  said.  "But 
if  you  want  me  to  come,  I  suppose  I  shall.  But  I  can't  for 
the  life  of  me  see  why  you  want  me  to." 

"I  want  to  tell  Freda,"  Betty  said,  as  though  that  were 


ACHIEVEMENT  317 

surely  conclusive;  and  then,  seeing  that  Jacob  was  about 
to  repeat  his  former  suggestion  that  to-morrow  was  time 
enough  for  that,  she  went  on.  "I  do  wish  you  would  be 
nicer  to  her.  Of  course  she  thinks  that  you  don't  like  her. 
Why  don't  you?" 

"I  would  if  she'd  let  me,"  replied  Jacob. 

"Well,  come  and  tell  her  about  the  book  now,"  pleaded 
Betty. 

"I  suppose  I  may  just  as  well  be  gracious  about  it  and 
say  'yes'  at  once,"  remarked  Jacob.  "When  once  you've 
made  up  your  mind  to  a  thing  .  .  ." 

"It  isn't  that,"  Betty  said  vaguely,  as  they  crossed  the 
road  to  take  the  yellow  Camden  Town  bus. 


XV 
MRS.   PARMENTER 


FREDA  was  at  the  window  as  they  passed  and  opened 
the   door  to  them. 

"I  thought  you  were  never  coming,"  she  said;  and  then 
to  Jacob:  "It  was  nice  of  you  to  come,  too." 

He  was  puzzled.  "Did  you  expect  us  .  .  ."  he  began, 
but  Betty  understood. 

"Is  she  ...  ?"  was  her  brief  indication  of  essentials, 
and  she  looked  quickly  up  the  stairs. 

"Yes;  but  really  this  time,"  Freda  said.  "Come  into  the 
drawing-room,  there's  no  one  there." 

"She's  been  unconscious  since  four  o'clock,"  she  went 
on  hurriedly  when  they  were  in  the  drawing-room.  "And 
I  sent  round  for  you,  and  you  were  out.  Jane  said  she'd 
left  a  message.  Didn't  you  get  it?" 

"We  haven't  been  back,"  explained  Betty.     "But  .  .  ." 

"I'm  afraid  so,"  Freda  said.  "The  doctor's  up  there 
now." 

They  spoke  quickly,  in  subdued  voices;  there  was  an  air 
of  hushed  eagerness  about  them  as  if  they  were  utterly 
absorbed  by  this  business  of  Mrs.  Parmenter's  illness. 

"Is  she  in  the  room  overhead?"  asked  Jacob  in  his  ordi- 
nary voice;  and  they  both  turned  and  looked  at  him,  ap- 
parently startled  by  his  noisy  intrusion  into  the  sibilance  of 
their  speech. 

"Oh  no,"  Freda  said.    "She's  in  her  own  room." 

"I  thought,  as  you  were  whispering  .  .  ."  began  Jacob, 
but  they  turned  away  from  him  and  continued  their  own 
conversation. 

"Has  he  been  here  long?"  Betty  asked. 

318 


ACHIEVEMENT  319 

"About  twenty  minutes,"  Freda  said. 

Jacob  walked  over  to  the  window  and  left  them  to  the 
discussion  of  Mrs.  Parmenter's  symptoms.  He  was  negli- 
gible just  now.  They  knew  that  he  was  lacking  in  interest 
and  sympathy,  and  this  affair  was  so  engrossing  that  they 
threw  aside  any  pretence  of  considering  his  feelings.  He 
was  merely  a  subsidiary  male,  quite  useless  and  super- 
fluous at  this  moment.  Freda  had  said  it  was  nice  of 
him  to  come,  but  having  come,  his  duty  was  to  remain 
silently  in  the  background. 

And  what  was  it  all  about?  he  wondered.  If  this  old 
woman  were  really  dying  at  last,  why  should  her  death 
be  regarded  as  a  solemn  and  important  occasion  ?  She  had 
done  nothing  in  the  world.  She  had  failed  to  hold  her 
husband's  affection.  He  could  picture  that  menage:  the 
inactive  Parmenter  and  his  critical,  acid,  middle-aged  wife. 
No  doubt  she  had  nagged  him.  Jacob  remembered  how 
she  had  taken  himself  to  task  about  the  question  of  making 
love  to  Betty.  She  had  been  nervous  then.  He  was  a 
stranger  and  not  subject  to  her  authority,  but  he  had  had 
a  glimpse  of  her  possibilities.  Her  methods  with  a  dilatory 
husband  would  have  been  more  pronounced.  And  after 
she  had  made  his  life  unbearable,  practically  thrown  him 
into  the  arms  of  another  woman,  she  had  made  an  immense 
grievance  of  his  desertion.  All  the  conventions  of  her 
world  exhibited  her  as  the  injured,  outraged  person.  That 
she  made  her  husband's  life  unbearable  was  a  venial  fault, 
that  he  should  desert  her  was  a  heinous  sin.  Without  ques- 
tion she  had  prided  herself  on  having  always  been  "faithful" 
to  him. 

Jacob's  thoughts  took  another  turn,  and  his  analysis 
wandered  into  uncertain  depths.  It  was  not  Mrs.  Par- 
menter's fault,  he  reflected;  she  could  not  be  other  than 
she  was.  There  were  thousands,  hundreds  of  thousands, 
of  women  like  her.  She  had  had  no  child,  but  if  she  had, 
her  tragedy  might  well  have  been  repeated.  She  could 
not  beget  love ;  probably  no  one  had  ever  felt  love  for  her ; 
her  child,  son  or  daughter,  might  have  left  her  also — they 


320  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

would  not  have  suffered  the  social  condemnation  heaped 
upon  their  father,  but  their  mother  would  have  found  cause 
for  another  -grievance.  She  cherished  those  grievances; 
they  gave  her  a  faint  importance.  Jacob  did  not  know 
whether  she  had  ever  fervently  desired  love;  he  had  seen 
no  signs  of  such  a  desire,  but  certainly  she  craved  for  con- 
sideration. She  had  enjoyed  a  little  dignity  as  the  spectacu- 
lar head  of  that  boarding-house ;  she  had  immensely  enjoyed 
the  dignity  of  those  deathbed  romances. 

All  her  life  she  had  done  nothing,  added  nothing  to  hu- 
man happiness.  So  far  as  Jacob  could  see,  she  had  lived 
in  vain,  conforming  to  the  little  rules  of  conduct  that  con- 
stituted, for  her,  the  whole  law  of  life ;  she  had  never  loved, 
never  borne  children,  never  sacrificed  herself,  never  faced 
existence.  Yet,  now  that  this  useless  and  insignificant  unit 
was  dying,  she  had  become  enormously  significant  and  im- 
portant. The  house  was  full  of  whispering  and  anxiety. 
Presently  the  blinds  would  be  down,  and  passers-by  would 
look  up  at  the  windows  and  feel  a  sudden  chill.  .  .  . 

It  was  not  Mrs.  Parmenter  that  was  of  importance ;  it 
was  death  invading  the  respectability  of  civilisation. 

Jacob  turned  round  and  saw  that  Betty  had  taken  off  her 
hat  and  coat.  Freda  was  just  leaving  the  room. 

"Are  you  going  to  stay?"  he  asked. 

"I  must  help  Freda,"  Betty  said.  "There's  no  reason 
why  you  should  stay  if  you  don't  want  to."  She  held  up 
her  hand.  "Listen,"  she  said,  "the  doctor's  just  corning 
down." 

"Well,  and  what  if  he  is  ?"  replied  Jacob,  fretfully.  "You 
won't  help  him  by  listening  to  his  steps  on  the  stairs." 

Betty  pushed  his  quibble  on  one  side.  "Sh !  I  want  to 
hear,"  she  said. 

Jacob  felt  stifled,  frustrated.  "My  dear  Betty,  don't  be 
so  silly,"  he  said.  "Freda  will  be  back  directly  to  tell  you 
precisely  what  the  doctor  has  said.  You  won't  know  a 
moment  sooner  by  listening  now." 

She  turned  her  head  and  looked  at  him  as  if  he  had  called 
to  her  from  another  room.  "Why  are  you  so  peevish?" 


ACHIEVEMENT  821 

she  asked.  "I  only  wanted  to  hear  whether  it  was  the 
doctor  or  not.  I  wish  you'd  go  if  you  want  to.  There's 
no  reason  why  you  should  stay." 

"Is  there  any  reason  why  you  should?"  he  said. 

"We  may  have  to  sit  up  with  her,"  replied  Betty. 

"Do  you  mean  that  you  may  be  here  all  night?" 

She  was  giving  him  her  attention  now.  "Darling,  I'm  so 
sorry,"  she  said.  "It  is  hard  lines  on  you,  I  know.  But  I 
couldn't  leave  it  all  to  Freda,  could  I  ?  She's  no  one  except 
Jane  to  do  anything." 

Jacob  suffered  a  sudden  reaction.  The  quotation,  "A 
ministering  angel,  thou,"  rose  to  his  consciousness.  "It's 
just  like  you,  of  course,"  he  said,  and  added  quickly:  "Yes, 
I  suppose  you  must  stay,  dear;  but  I  don't  think  I  will, 
unless  I  can  help  in  any  way." 

"You  can  get  dinner  out,"  Betty  suggested. 

He  nodded,  and  found  himself  listening  attentively  to 
the  rumble  of  a  man's  voice  in  the  hall.  Neither  he  nor 
Betty  spoke  again  until  they  heard  the  front  door  gently 
closed,  and  the  sound  of  the  doctor's  feet  going  quickly 
down  the  steps  outside.  Jacob  instinctively  moved  towards 
the  window,  and  was  rewarded  by  the  sight  of  a  top-hat 
and  the  back  of  a  grey  overcoat  with  a  black  velvet  collar. 

As  he  turned  back  to  the  room,  Freda  came  in. 

"It  was  Dr.  Paramore,"  she  said,  as  though  that  were 
a  fact  of  importance.  "He  says  that  she  mayn't  recover 
consciousness." 

"Will  it  be  long?"  asked  Jacob. 

"He  can't  say,"  Freda  replied.  "It  might  be  two  or  three 
days,  he  thinks — not  longer." 

They  stood  in  a  group  near  the  middle  of  the  room.  Ja- 
cob had  been  caught  by  the  ominous  mystery  of  it  all  now, 
and  it  was  he  who  broke  the  silence  that  had  suddenly  come 
upon  them.  "What  is  it,  exactly?"  he  asked. 

"Old  age  chiefly,  I  think,"  Freda  said.  "Dr.  Paramore 
thought  that  she  had  probably  ruptured  some  little  blood- 
vessel in  the  brain — a  kind  of  apoplexy,  you  know.  It 
isn't  uncommon,  he  says."  She  paused  a  moment,  and  then 


322  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

added :  "There  won't  be  any  difficulty  about  the  certificate." 

"I  shall  stay  and  sit  up  with  her,  of  course,"  said  Betty 
quickly,  as  though  she  wished  to  cover  up  that  last  prac- 
tical aspect  of  the  affair  disclosed  by  Freda. 

"Of  course  you  won't,"  Freda  returned. 

For  a  minute  or  so  they  argued  that  point.  Jacob  saw 
that  both  of  them  knew  perfectly  well  that  Betty  would 
stay,  but  the  argument  was  a  necessary  formula. 

"What  about  you?"  said  Freda,  turning  to  him. 

"Oh,  I  shall  be  all  right,"  Jacob  said.  "Is  there  anything 
I  could  do  for  you?" 

"I  don't  think  so,  thanks  very  much,"  Freda  told  him. 

They  both  came  with  him  to  the  door,  and  he  whispered 
a  good-bye  to  Betty  in  the  hall. 


ii 

Even  when  he  came  into  the  lamplit  street,  that  air  of 
expectancy  and  subdual  remained  with  him  for  a  moment, 
so  that  he  frowned  at  the  clamour  of  a  whistling  errand- 
boy  who  rattled  past  him  on  a  leisurely  carrier-tricycle. 

And  then  he  recovered  himself  and  went  on  into  Bedford 
Square  with  a  grateful  sense  of  freedom.  The  clatter 
of  a  horse's  hoofs  and  the  jingle  of  a  passing  hansom  com- 
pleted his  feeling  of  liberation.  He  wanted  to  shout.  There 
was  no  reason  why  he  should  be  gloomy,  silent  and  de- 
pressed. Betty  would  soon  be  back  with  him,  and  he  had 
had  his  novel  accepted.  They  had  never  told  Freda.  It 
would  have  been  impossible  to  tell  her.  He  wondered 
why. 

The  whole  affair  had  been  strange  in  its  orthodoxy.  All 
that  creeping  silence  had  been  usual,  the  accepted  attitude, 
and  he  had  been  intrigued  into  it.  But  in  this  case,  at  least, 
it  had  been  quite  meaningless.  The  old  woman  upstairs  had 
been  unconscious.  They  would  not  have  disturbed  her 
if  they  had  played  the  piano.  Yet  that  would  have  seemed, 
and  still  seemed  to  him,  an  impossible  outrage. 

He  pictured  the  boarders  at  dinner.    Perhaps  Betty  would 


ACHIEVEMENT  323 

be  at  the  head  of  the  table.  She  would  not  tell  the  board- 
ers that  Mrs.  Parmenter  was  dying ;  if  possible,  they  would 
not  be  told  until  she  had  been  taken  out  of  the  house.  Death 
was  not  only  ominous,  it  was  also  slightly  indecent,  a  thing 
to  be  avoided  by  any  respectable  boarding-house.  But  the 
boarders  would  be  told  that  she  was  very  ill,  so  that  the 
possibility  of  outrage  by  noise  might  be  lessened. 

Not  one  of  them  all  was  devoted  to  Mrs.  Parmenter,  but 
she  had  reached  her  hour  of  supreme  importance — and 
was  unaware  of  it  now  that  it  had  come.  Had  she  been 
endowed  with  some  gift  of  prevision  that  had  warned  her 
to  anticipate  the  opportunity  she  could  never  use  ?  At  least 
she  had  had,  and  no  doubt  enjoyed,  the  simulacrum,  al- 
though the  reality  was  denied  to  her.  Curiously  enough, 
Freda  and  Betty  had  seemed  to  know  that  those  earlier 
ceremonies  had  been  a  sham.  The  last  time  she  had  been 
sent  for,  Betty  had  been  a  little  annoyed.  They  had  no 
doubt  now.  They  recognised  the  shadow  when  it  came. 
And  it  was  to  that  they  deferred;  that  was  the  figure  to 
which  they  paid  their  terrified  tribute.  The  withered  old 
woman  on  the  bed  was  only  honoured  for  the  company 
she  was  keeping. 

A  hot,  sour  smell  penetrated  Jacob's  abstraction,  and 
he  came  back  into  the  world  of  life,  to  find  that  he  was  at 
the  intersection  of  Oxford  Street  and  Tottenham  Court 
Road.  The  big  factory  over  the  way  had  been  manufac- 
turing vinegar  that  afternoon.  He  turned  westwards  with 
a  touch  of  impatience,  and  struggled  through  the  group 
of  people  who  were  waiting  for  the  buses.  He  was  pleas- 
antly absorbed  by  his  meditations.  It  seemed  to  him  that 
this  slight  experience  had  given  him  a  new  insight  into 
the  problem  of  life.  His  mind  was  deliciously  clear  and 
active,  his  thoughts  a  fascinating  entertainment.  He  found 
an  Italian  restaurant  a  little  way  past  Wardour  Street,  and 
went  in  and  ordered  dinner. 

For  a  time  he  was  distracted  by  his  surroundings  and 
the  detail  of  his  meal,  but  when  he  had  finished,  the  cur- 


324  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

rent  of  his  thought  began  to  flow  again,  powerful  with  new 
suggestions. 

Why,  he  wondered,  should  Mrs.  Parmenter  be  watched 
through  the  night?  The  more  primitive  animal  sought 
loneliness  when  the  last  call  came.  There  was  a  reason 
for  that:  the  necessity  to  find  refuge.  The  wild  had  no 
pity  for  the  injured  and  the  dying.  The  old  wolf  was 
the  prey  of  the  pack.  But  civilisation  attended — and 
watched.  Was  it  to  console  and  cheer  the  departing  visi- 
tor? Mrs.  Parmenter  was  not  expected  to  recover  con- 
sciousness; still  there  was  a  hope,  probably.  And  if  she 
did  become  aware  of  life  again  at  the  last,  it  must  be 
presented  to  her  in  human  form.  She  must  be  held  back, 
if  possible",  for  another  hour,  even  for  another  five  min- 
utes. Although  she  was  old,  and  there  was  no  possible 
chance  of  her  recovery,  they  must  keep  her  alive  as  long 
as  they  could ;  snatch  for  her  a  day,  an  hour,  a  minute  more 
of  earth;  fight  desperately  lest  the  eternity  she  anticipated 
should  be  prolonged  by  one  unnecessary  fraction  of  time. 

(Could  one  prolong  eternity?  According  to  the  Christian 
theory,  eternity  had  certainly  one  end — the  beginning ! ) 

Why  did  not  the  spirit,  slowly  disentangling  itself  from 
the  flesh,  come  to  despise  the  garment  it  was  beginning  to 
wear  so  lightly?  Even  now,  in  the  flush  of  health,  Jacob 
felt  that  he  could  look  down  upon  and  despise  his  body, 
with  its  contemptible  necessities  for  food  and  toilet,  its 
everlasting  demand  upon  the  attention.  Its  outlines  might 
be  beautiful,  subject  for  the  theme  of  the  highest  art;  but 
the  detail  of  its  functions,  its  perpetual  decay  and  the 
means  of  its  renewal,  was  disgusting,  something  one  did 
not  dare  to  contemplate.  He  found  an  image  in  the  re- 
membrance of  that  vinegar  factory.  .  .  . 

Yet  it  seemed  that  the  departing  spirit  clung  fondly  to 
that  chemical  laboratory  which  had  been  the  temporary 
vehicle  of  its  expression ;  or  if  it  did  not — and  he  had  heard 
that  "the  pangs  of  death"  was  a  romantic  phrase  justified 
only  by  rare  exceptions — it  was  certainly  assumed  to  do  so 
by  the  living.  And  the  misconception  did  not  end  there,  for 


ACHIEVEMENT  825 

after  death  this  disgusting,  useless  body  was  honoured,  cased 
in  lead  and  walnut,  loaded  with  flowers,  carried  in  a  glass 
case,  and  put  away  with  propitiatory  ceremonies. 

"Lord,  what  rot  it  all  is!"  thought  Jacob.  He  was  ex- 
alted and  happy,  miraculously  rediscovering  for  himself 
all  the  old,  neglected  truths  that  shine  so  brightly  when 
they  are  our  own  treasure-trove. 

And  the  creative  spirit  stayed  with  him  until  he  was 
nearly  home  in  Great  Ormond  Street.  It  failed  rapidly 
at  last — he  had  begun  to  digest  his  dinner,  no  doubt — but 
left  him  with  an  afterglow  of  resolution  to  make  a  prac- 
tical use  of  his  momentary  illumination.  He  had  had  new 
experience  that  day,  and  had  profited  by  it.  He  must  use 
this  new  knowledge  of  his  in  a  future  novel.  There  was 
no  room  for  it  in  "The  Creature  of  Circumstance,"  but  in 
the  second  part  of  "John  Tristram"  he  might  find,  or  make, 
an  opportunity. 

The  rooms  in  Great  Ormond  Street  seemed  horribly 
empty  and  desolate.  After  he  had  lit  the  lamp  he  went 
into  the  bedroom,  and  reflected  that  he  and  Betty  had  never 
before  been  separated  for  more  than  an  hour  or  two  since 
she  came  to  him  in  Cornwall. 

He  wanted  to. tell  her  what  he  had  been  thinking,  and 
also  to  anticipate  his  interview  with  Norman  Goodrich. 
He  remembered  that  he  must  write  and  confirm  that  ap- 
pointment. He  hesitated  for  a  moment,  wondering  if 
to-morrow  would  not  do  as  well.  There  was  plenty  of  time 
— too  much  time.  Why  had  they  not  said  Wednesday  in- 
stead of  Thursday?  Finally  he  sat  down  and  wrote  the 
letter,  because  he  thought  Betty  would  commend  his  promp- 
titude. She  kept  him  up  to  these  things.  She  was  like  a 
strong,  invigorating  current  of  life  to  him.  Without  her 
he  was  incomplete. 

He  pictured  her  in  that  upstairs  room,  watching  through 
the  long  night,  watching  the  disintegrating  figure  of  old 
age  that  fought  to  remain  a  few  moments  longer  out  of 
Paradise. 


326  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

in 

The  struggle  lasted  until  the  small  hours  of  Thursday 
morning. 

Jacob  conceived  some  kind  of  picture  from  the  reports 
of  a  tired  Betty,  whom  he  saw  at  intervals  either  when 
he  called  to  make  inquiry  at  Montague  Place,  or  when  she 
returned  to  Great  Ormond  Street  for  a  few  hours'  rest  from 
the  expectant  atmosphere  of  the  boarding-house. 

Nothing  could  be  done  for  the  patient  except  force  a  lit- 
tle nourishment  into  her.  Death  was  creeping  up  from 
her  feet  as  an  invading  paralysis  that  slowly  ousted  the 
forces  of  life  with  unrelenting  pertinacity.  She  lay  per- 
fectly still,  her  mouth  slightly  open,  and  gave  no  sign  that 
she  still  lived  other  than  by  the  amazingly  rapid  and  faintly 
stertorous  breathing  that  went  on  almost  regularly,  as  fast 
as  the  tick  of  a  clock,  except  that  now  and  again  a  little 
pause,  a  second's  cessation  would  snatch  the  attention  of 
the  watcher  back  to  the  figure  on  the  bed. 

But  a  fate  he  would  have  avoided  brought  Jacob  an  actual 
sight  of  the  patient  on  Wednesday  evening. 

He  had  gone  to  Montague  Place  after  tea  to  make  in- 
quiries. He  had  not  seen  Betty  since  ten  o'clock,  when  she 
had  returned  from  their  rooms  to  release  Freda,  who  had 
been  keeping  the  night  vigil. 

Jane  opened  the  door  to  him. 

"She's  just  the  same,"  she  said  confidentially — her  man- 
ners were  not  those  of  the  trained  servant — "and  when  you 
came  you  was  to  come  in,  please,  because  you're  wanted." 

Jacob's  heart  sank.  What  could  they  want  him  for?  he 
wondered. 

Betty  came  to  him  in  the  drawing-room.  "Do  you  think 
you  could  go  up  and  sit  with  her  for  an  hour,  dear?"  she 
said,  as  soon  as  she  had  kissed  him.  She  was  evidently 
in  a  great  hurry. 

"Oh,  Lord!"  ejaculated  the  horrified  Jacob. 

"Would  you  mind  very  much  ?"  Betty  asked.  "I  thought 
.  .  .  you  see,  Freda's  asleep.  She  didn't  go  to  lie  down 


ACHIEVEMENT  827 

until  three  o'clock.  And  Jane  has  got  her  hands  full,  and 
there's  no  one  to  cook  the  dinner.  We  had  a  woman  in  yes- 
terday, but  she  couldn't  come  to-day."  She  looked  at  him 
doubtfully.  "Of  course,  if  you'd  much  sooner  not,"  she 
said.  "I  must  go  back  now,  in  any  case.  She's  all  alone." 

"Must  she  be  watched?"  asked  Jacob. 

"Yes,  dear,  of  course  she  must,"  Betty  told  him. 

He  knew  that  he  could  not  dispute  that  confident  state- 
ment by  any  general  argument,  nor  was  his  next  suggestion 
any  more  acceptable.  "Why  not  let  the  boarders  get  din- 
ner out  to-night?  Just  for  once,  surely,  it  wouldn't  mat- 
ter ...  under  the  circumstances." 

Betty  shook  her  head  gravely.  "Oh,  we  couldn't!"  she 
said  conclusively. 

Jacob  was  stirred  by  a  feeble  irritation.  Women  were 
so  stubbornly  conservative.  They  would  endure  anything 
rather  than  break  a  meaningless  rule  of  everyday  con- 
duct. Here  were  Betty  and  Freda,  both  of  them  intelli- 
gent women,  yet  they  would  slave  to  maintain  at  almost 
any  sacrifice  to  themselves,  either  such  an  empty  form  as 
this  watch  by  the  dying,  or  such  a  trivial  expediency  as  the 
common  routine  of  a  boarding-house.  He  could  not  see, 
then,  anything  fine  or  splendid  in  their  self-sacrifice;  he 
was  merely  annoyed  because  he  judged  it  a  concession  to 
a  foolish  rule-of-thumb,  implying  an  inability  to  adapt 
themselves  to  unusual  conditions.  And  he  hated  the  thought 
of  sitting  in  that  dreadful  room  upstairs. 

"I  can't  see  why  .  .  ."  he  began  fretfully. 

"It  doesn't  matter,  dear;  we'll  manage  somehow,"  Betty 
said.  She  showed  no  kind  of  annoyance,  but  he  thought 
he  saw  the  signs  of  disappointment  in  her  face,  as  if  she 
had  counted  on  him,  and  he  had  failed  her.  "I  must  go 
back  now,  anyway,"  she  added.  "I  don't  suppose  I  shall 
be  home  until  to-morrow  morning." 

Jacob  was  ready  with  a  dozen  excellent  reasons  to  prove 
that  all  this  business  was  no  concern  of  theirs,  that  this 
watching  was  a  futile  superstition,  that  the  boarders  might 


328  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

quite  well  shift  for  themselves  on  this  one  unprecedented 
occasion ;  but  he  looked  at  Betty,  hesitated,  and  said : 

"I'm  sure  I  don't  know  why  I  should  mind  so  much." 

"It's  quite  natural  that  you  should,"  Betty  said. 

He  was ,  conscious  of  his  utter  selfishness.  The  mood 
of  irritation  that  had  instantly  and  automatically  opposed 
the  suggestion  that  he  should  sit  with  Mrs.  Parmenter,  had 
in  some  inexplicable  way  been  allayed  by  Betty's  acces- 
sion to  his  refusal.  He  had  been  released  from  any  pres- 
sure to  perform  that  revolting  duty,  and  was  ashamed  of  his 
victory. 

"I'll  go,  dear,"  he  announced  impulsively. 

She  put  her  hands  on  his  shoulders  and  kissed  him.  "I 
don't  want  you  to  go  if  it  will  upset  you,"  she  said. 

"It  won't.  Why  should  it?"  he  returned.  "It's  idiotic 
to  be  so  squeamish.  Come  along.  Take  me  up  now." 

He  had  crossed  some  mental  obstacle.  He  was  prepared 
and  determined  now,  already  regarding  this  horrible  duty 
as  an  experience  to  be  endured  and  then  added  to  his  knowl- 
edge of  life. 

It  was  Betty  who  hesitated. 

"Are  you  quite  sure  .  .  ."  she  began. 

"Darling,  if  it  was  only  for  your  sake,"  he  interrupted 
her.  "But  I  should  feel  so  mean  if  I  couldn't  do  some- 
thing, after  all  you've  been  doing." 

"She's  a  sort  of  relation  of  mine,  you  see,"  Betty  said. 

But  when  he  was  on  the  stairs  he  had  a  brief  reaction. 
He  was  cold  and  trembling,  as  if  he  were  about  to  witness 
some  obscene  thing  that  should  be  hidden  from  all  knowl- 
edge of  humanity. 

He  stopped  Betty  on  the  landing.  "I  shan't  have  to  do 
anything,"  he  whispered.  "I — I  couldn't  touch  her." 

She  shook  her  head  with  decision.  "She  can't  even  move," 
she  said.  "If  there's  any  change,  ring  the  bell.  I'll  come." 


ACHIEVEMENT  329 


IV 

Mrs.  Parmenter  lay  on  her  back.  Her  toupee  was  gone, 
and  Jacob  saw  that  she  was  nearly  bald;  a  few  wisps  of 
dead  white  hair  was  all  that  stragglingly  covered  the  faintly 
pink  dome  of  her  skull.  And  she  was  changed  in  other 
ways  also.  The  invading  paralysis  was  releasing  the  ten- 
sion of  long  habit,  and  the  lines  about  her  mouth  were 
relaxed  and  smoothed,  the  grey-black  brows  had  fallen 
farther  forward  over  the  hollow  that  cased  the  closed  but 
slightly  distended  eyelids. 

Jacob  would  not  have  recognised  her  if  he  had  been 
asked  to  identify  her  in  a  hospital  ward ;  but  the  very 
strangeness  of  her  appearance  relaxed  his  apprehension. 
Nevertheless,  he  was  profoundly  shocked;  and  one  detail 
curiously  held  his  attention,  and  for  some  reason  appeared 
to  him  more  particularly  obscene.  She  lay  with  her  arms 
out  of  bed,  her  withered  hands  resting  limply  on  the  coun- 
terpane; and  she  was  wearing  a  fine  linen  nightdress,  with 
lace  at  the  neck  and  wrists  and  down  the  crumpled  bosom. 
It  was  the  intimate  garment  appropriate  to  tenderness  and 
youth,  and  it  clung,  still  with  some  suggestion  of  invitation 
and  feminine  allurement,  to  this  terrible,  inhuman  figure  of 
age  and  decay. 

He  had  sat  down  near  the  window  when  Betty  had  left 
him,  and  had  gently  closed  the  door  behind  her.  He  was 
no  longer  intimidated,  save  by  the  burden  of  his  respon- 
sibility. This  paralysed  stranger  on  the  bed,  who  remotely 
resembled  the  old  woman  he  had  known,  was  too  helpless 
and  too  quiet  to  be  any  cause  for  fear.  He  could  not 
have  borne  to  witness  agony,  but  once  he  had  become  used 
to  the  unnatural  sound  of  that  short,  rapid  breathing,  he  was 
comparatively  at  ease.  Betty  had  sat  in  this  chair,  alone, 
through  the  endless  night,  he  remembered,  with  no  one 
within  easy  call. 

But  his  sense  of  responsibility  was  painfully  quickened. 
He  could  find  no  consolation  now  in  his  perfectly  rea- 


330  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

sonable  attitude  of  Monday  evening.  This  palpitating  thing 
that  he  watched  was  a  living  creature  whose  pain  must 
necessarily  evoke  his  sympathy  and  care.  She  might  be 
finally  doomed,  but  while  she  could  still  suffer  in  the  body, 
it  was  his  duty  and  his  wish  to  tender  any  alleviation  of 
the  pain  of  her  departure. 

Here  was  one  answer,  he  reflected,  to  his  earlier,  de- 
tached analysis  of  this  business  of  guarding  the  dying.  And 
as  he  sat  in  that  dingy,  old-fashioned  room,  which  had  a 
character  different  from  any  other  room  in  the  house,  as 
if  this  one  room  alone  had  retained  the  odour  and  asso- 
ciations of  1860,  whilst  the  others  had  developed  with  the 
century,  he  found  a  second  answer  that  appeared  to  him 
still  more  convincing. 

It  was  not  only  for  the  patient's  good  that  there  was 
a  necessity  for  this  watch,  it  was  even  more  for  one's 
own.  The  evidence  of  carelessness  in  such  a  case  as  this 
was  the  mark  of  selfishness,  of  the  failure  of  sympathy. 
One  gained  by  giving — the  more  unconsciously,  the  better. 
That  failure  of  sympathy  had  been  his  own  fault;  he  was 
inclined  to  be  too  detached,  to  weigh  motives  too  intel- 
lectually. He  brought  too  much  judgment  and  too  little 
feeling  to  his  relations  with  humanity.  How  quickly  he 
had  resented  Betty's  proposition  downstairs,  and  how  ready 
he  had  been  with  apparently  sound  arguments  to  prove 
that  the  tiny  act  of  sacrifice  demanded  from  him,  was  super- 
fluous and  unreasonable!  He  lacked  charity  and  under- 
standing. He  did  not  surrender  himself  in  order  to  enter 
into  life.  Betty  and  Freda  did  the  thing  unconsciously. 
Theirs  was  the  real  intuition,  the  direct  apprehension  and 
sympathy  without  any  inductive  or  other  conscious  mental 
process. 

He  looked  out  at  the  dead  silhouette  of  the  British  Mu- 
seum, outlined  against  the  dull  glow  of  the  sky,  and 
strangely  pierced  here  and  there  by  the  yellow  oblong  of 
a  lighted  window.  He  felt  that  it  was  in  some  sense  a  sym- 
bol, as  if  all  his  view  of  life  could  bring  him  no  more 
than  the  dim  suggestion  of  a  lit  interior  against  the  dark- 


ACHIEVEMENT  331 

ness.  He  had  been  too  preoccupied  with  the  survey  of 
that  great  blank  outline;  the  essential  thing  was  the  reali- 
sation of  that  shining  interior.  .  .  . 

Perhaps  he  had  always  misjudged  Mrs.  Parmenter.  How 
did  he  know,  how  could  he  possibly  know,  what  she  had 
taken  from  life  and  what  she  had  given? 

He  was  still  absorbed  in  his  metaphor  when  that  short, 
quick  breathing,  to  the  sound  of  which  he  was  already  so 
accustomed  that  it  no  longer  distracted  his  attention,  was 
suddenly  interrupted.  It  was  as  if  the  engines  of  a  liner 
had  been  unexpectedly  stopped.  Jacob  felt  his  heart  leap 
as  he  instantly  turned  to  the  bed.  But  it  was  only  a  mo- 
mentary catch  in  the  machinery  that  still  worked  the  func- 
tions of  that  limp,  unknowing  body.  A  pause  of  two  sec- 
onds, perhaps,  accompanied  by  a  hard  rasping  in  the  dry 
throat,  and  then  the  furious  race  began  again,  if  anything 
more  desperately  than  before. 

Jacob  listened,  and  wondered  if  he  ought  to  call  Betty. 
He  moved  his  chair  a  little  nearer,  and  brought  himself 
to  watch  the  still  figure  on  the  bed.  Once  he  thought  her 
eyelids  twitched,  but  he  could  not  be  sure.  The  flaring 
gas-burner  was  leaping  now  and  again  within  the  globe  of 
its  opal  glass  shade,  and  threw  queer  shadows  on  the  bed. 
He  got  up,  tip-toed  over  to  the  bracket,  and  turned  the 
gas  a  little  lower.  It  still  flickered  as  if  in  a  draught,  al- 
though he  could  feel  no  movement  of  air  in  the  room.  He 
remembered  the  superstition  of  the  "winding-sheet"  in  the 
candle. 

Perhaps  Mrs.  Parmenter  was  actually  dying  at  that  mo- 
ment. He  stood  by  the  bed  and  looked  more  closely  at 
her.  Her  loose  lips  were  puffed  outwards  by  each  sharp 
exhalation,  fell  back,  and  were  blown  out  again ;  but  there 
was  no  other  movement,  except  a  hardly  perceptible  dis- 
tention  and  contraction  of  the  thin,  wrinkled  throat. 

He  stood  staring,  fascinated.  That  lax  mobility  of  the 
lips  was  horribly  inhuman;  it  suggested  the  feeble,  inert 
motion  of  inanimate  matter.  The  spirit,  the  will,  was  no 
longer  in  control;  the  flesh  was  alive,  but  its  life  was  sep- 


332  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

arate  from  that  of  the  organism  as  a  whole.  What  force 
still  animated  the  beating  heart  and  the  panting  lungs, 
Jacob  wondered?  Was  that,  too,  become  mechanical,  or 
had  the  higher  organs  of  the  body  a  separate  existence 
subsidiary  to  the  conscious  life  of  the  individual — an  ex- 
istence that  might  be  continued  for  a  time  after  the  spirit 
had  gone? 

If  the  mind  of  Mrs.  Parmenter  did  not  re-awake  to 
what  we  call  consciousness  before  that  game  old  heart 
and  lungs  tired  of  the  lonely  struggle  and  fluttered  wearily 
to  a  standstill,  who  could  say  when  the  spirit  had  fled,  or 
when  the  individual  he  had  known  had  actually  died? 
Would  it  be  possible  to  galvanise  the  mind  back  to  action 
and  control  by  some  tremendous  shock,  or  was  it  beyond 
the  reach  of  any  physical  stimulus?  He  knew  that  the 
old  theory  of  the  recovery  of  consciousness,  the  sudden 
clearness  and  enlightenment  that  immediately  preceded 
death,  was  only  a  fable  in  cases  such  as  this.  The  uncon- 
trolled machinery  of  the  body  maintained  its  functions 
for  a  time,  and  then  ran  down,  rattled  out  into  silence. 

Mrs.  Parmenter's  spirit  might  be  moving  through  dreams 
of  Paradise  while  her  deserted  body,  fighting  for  its  own 
existence,  sought  to  keep  open  a  dwelling-place  for  the 
occupant  who  could  never  return.  .  .  . 

It  seemed  incredible  to  him,  then,  that  anyone  could  ever 
die.  This  thing  that  he  watched  was  not  Mrs.  Parmenter. 
She  was  away  somewhere,  and  the  body  she  had  occupied 
was  already  strangely  altered.  It  was  losing  the  impres- 
sion that  she  had  stamped  upon  it  in  her  seventy  years 
of  life,  reverting  to  some  original  mould  that  might  pos- 
sibly figure  the  representative  type  of  humanity  if  the 
process  of  relaxation  could  be  prolonged. 

He  was  startled  by  a  sound  behind  him,  and  turned  to 
find  Betty  gently  closing  the  door. 

"Nothing  happened?"  she  whispered,  coming  over  to  the 
bed. 

"She  stopped  breathing  once  for  about  half  a  minute/' 


ACHIEVEMENT  333 

Jacob  confided  to  her  in  the  same  undertone.  "I  nearly 
rang  for  you." 

"That  often  happens,"  Betty  said.  "But  surely  not  half 
a  minute?" 

"It  seemed  a  long  time,"  replied  Jacob. 

"It's  a  quarter  to  eight,"  Betty  went  on,  still  whisper- 
ing. "They're  having  dinner.  You'd  better  go  down  and 
join  them.  I  told  Jane  to  lay  a  place  for  you." 

Jacob  shook  his  head.  "I  couldn't,"  he  affirmed.  "I'll 
go  out  if  you  don't  want  me  any  longer." 

She  looked  at  him  with  a  slight  perplexity,  but  made  no 
attempt  to  dissuade  him. 

"It  hasn't  upset  you,  has  it  ?"  she  asked  anxiously,  when 
they  were  in  the  hall  downstairs. 

"It  made  me  think,  that  was  all,"  Jacob  said.  He  hesi- 
tated a  moment,  and  then  added:  "Betty,  why  do  we  still 
speak  of  that  body  upstairs  as  'she'?  She's  gone,  you  know 
— Mrs.  Parmenter,  I  mean." 

Betty's  face  expressed  a  question  of  Jacob's  sanity. 

"Oh,  I'm  all  right,"  he  assured  her  with  a  smile.  "I'll 
explain  to-morrow." 

"You're  sure  it  hasn't  upset  you?"  persisted  Betty. 

"Not  in  the  way  you  mean,"  he  said. 


Betty  arrived  in  Great  Ormond  Street  at  eight  o'clock 
the  next  morning.  She  looked  pale  and  tired.  Jacob  was 
shaving  when  she  came  in,  and  she  joined  him  in  the  bed- 
room and  sat  down  on  the  bed  with  a  sigh  of  relief. 

"It's  all  over,"   she   announced. 

Jacob  stood  before  her  with  one  side  of  his  face  cov- 
ered with  lather. 

"What  time?"  he  asked. 

"Four  o'clock  this  morning." 

"She  didn't  recover  consciousness,  of  course?" 

Betty  shook  her  head,  and  added  as  an  afterthought: 
"Why  'of  course'?" 


334  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

"I  knew  she  couldn't,"  Jacob  said,  with  profound  con- 
viction. "Didn't  she  make  any  sign?" 

"She — she  gurgled  a  little,"  Betty  told  him,  "and  just 
stopped  breathing.  That  was  all.  We  weren't  sure  at 
first." 

"You  were  both  there,  then?" 

"Freda  fetched  me  just  before  the  end.  She  thought  it 
was  nearly  over." 

"The  machinery  was  running  down,"  explained  Jacob; 
"it  had  only  been  going  on  by  a  sort  of  inertia." 

Betty  looked  puzzled,  but  she  was  too  tired  to  ask  any 
questions. 

"I'll  tell  you  sometime,"  Jacob  said.  "You're  too  done 
up  for  metaphysics  just  now." 

"Yes;  I  think  I'll  have  a  cup  of  tea  with  you  and  then 
go  to  bed,"  replied  Betty.  "The  undertaker  is  sending  a 
woman  in  to  do  all  that's  necessary,  so  I  needn't  go  back 
to-day.  The  funeral's  to  be  on  Saturday  morning.  Dr. 
Paramore  said  we  oughtn't  to  put  it  off  too  long." 

Jacob  meditated,  rubbing  the  dried  lather  on  his  unshaved 
cheek.  That  shell  in  the  lace-trimmed  night-dress  had  been 
fighting  many  enemies,  he  thought.  How  soon  the  body 
was  invaded  when  the  spirit  had  gone  out  of  it. 

"I  wonder  where  she  is  now?"  he  said. 

Betty  smiled  weakly.  "Hadn't  you  better  finish  shav- 
ing?" she  asked.  "I'll  get  the  breakfast." 

"I'll  do  that,"  Jacob  said  eagerly.  "It's  practically  all 
ready.  I  put  the  kettle  and  the  egg-saucepan  on  before  I 
started  to  shave." 

"You  finish   dressing,"   replied   Betty,  getting  up. 

"Really,  I'd  sooner  you'd  let  me  .  .  ."  began  Jacob; 
but  Betty  had  already  gone  into  the  other  room  to  lay  the 
cloth. 

"I'll  go  to  bed  for  a  bit  now,  dear,"  she  said,  when  they 
had  had  breakfast.  "I  must  come  down  with  you  this 
afternoon." 

"Down  where?"  asked  Jacob. 

"You  surely  haven't  forgotten  that  you're  going  to  see 


ACHIEVEMENT  335 

Norman  Goodrich  this  afternoon!"  exclaimed  Betty. 
"Didn't  you  write?" 

"I  had — absolutely  forgotten,"  Jacob  said.  "But  I  did 
write  on  Monday  evening."  He  paused  reflectively,  and 
then  put  his  hand  into  his  jacket-pocket.  "If  you  don't 
believe  me,  here's  the  letter,"  he  added.  "I  forgot  to  post 
it." 

"I  don't  know  what  you'd  do  without  me,"  Betty  said 
fondly.  "You'd  better  go  out  at  once  and  telephone." 

"No  good  till  ten  o'clock,"  replied  Jacob  triumphantly. 
"They  wouldn't  be  there.  We're  collaborators,  you  see," 
he  explained.  "It  takes  the  two  of  us  to  get  things  quite 
right." 

He  reflected  on  that  statement  as  he  sat  very  quietly  in 
the  sitting-room  later  in  the  morning,  trying  to  write  a 
review  while  Betty  slept.  Betty  had  been  right  about  many 
things  with  regard  to  Mrs.  Parmenter's  illness ;  he  acknowl- 
edged that  without  qualification.  But  he  had  supplemented 
her  intuitions,  and  perhaps  he  had,  in  a  way,  "got  more 
out  of  that  experience,"  as  he  phrased  it,  than  Betty  had. 

"It  has  been  rather  tremendous,  altogether,"  he  thought. 
"Who  would  have  imagined  that  Mrs.  Parmenter,  of  all 
people,  could  have  made  me  forget  one  of  the  most  im- 
portant engagements  in  my  life?  But  it's  experience  that 
matters,  not  the  writing  about  it." 

He  had  a  sense  of  achievement.  He  felt  that  he  had 
acquired  new  and  extraordinarily  valuable  knowledge. 

"Experience,  and  what  one  gets  out  of  it,"  he  concluded. 

It  occurred  to  him,  inappropriately,  that  "Dr.  Paramore" 
would  be  a  splendid  name  for  a  character  in  a  novel. 


XVI 
THE  NEOPHYTE 


THE  offices  of  Norman  Goodrich  were  in  Clement's  Inn. 
The  jamb  of  the  outer  door  displayed  the  style  of  the 
firm  in  the  same  unobtrusive  lettering  that  advertised  the 
occupants  of  other  chambers  in  the  block,  but  added  some 
little  touch  of  importance  by  the  information :  "Ground  and 
1st."  All  the  other  floors  were  shared  by  at  least  two 
names,  and  the  catalogue  of  the  third-floor  tenants  made 
quite  a  respectable  paragraph. 

Jacob  had  left  Betty  at  the  entrance  to  the  Inn.  She  was 
to  meet  him  near  the  tea-shop  in  which  they  had  celebrated 
the  coming  of  Norman  Goodrich's  letter.  That  gloomy, 
rambling  basement  held  no  aesthetic  or  gastronomic  attrac- 
tions, but  it  was  hallowed  by  their  emotions.  They  had 
decided  to  use  it  on  great  occasions,  and  enrich  it  with  the 
associations  of  Jacob's  success. 

"We  don't  know  that  they're  going  to  take  it  yet,"  he 
had  reminded  Betty,  when  she  had  proposed  the  rendezvous. 

"Of  course  they're  going  to  take  it,"  she  had  said  con- 
temptuously. "The  only  point  is  how  much  they're  going 
to  give  you  for  it.  And  do  try  not  to  be  too  apologetic." 

"They  may  be  going  to  offer  to  publish  it  at  my  expense," 
Jacob  had  suggested. 

"If  they  do,  you'll  bring  the  manuscript  back  with  you," 
she  had  replied. 

"All  right.  If  you  see  me  coming  back  with  a  parcel, 
you'll  know,"  he  had  said. 

"Don't  you  dare !"  Betty  had  warned  him. 

And  although  he  had  enjoyed  the  spirit  and  encourage- 

336 


ACHIEVEMENT  337 

ment  of  that  altercation,  now  that  he  was  at  the  door  of 
the  publishers'  offices  and  already  taking  part,  imaginatively, 
in  the  coming  interview,  he  wished  that  he  had  not  been 
handicapped  by  Betty's  injunctions.  If  he  had  had  no  re- 
sponsibility to  consider,  he  could  have  approached  this  meet- 
ing with  a  careless,  happy  mind;  instead  of  that  he  was 
burdened  by  the  necessity  for  making  terms. 

He  found  a  door  on  his  left  marked,  "Office.  Inquiries." 
He  knocked,  and  then  opened  the  door  boldly  and  walked 
in.  He  was  not  a  timid  supplicant,  as  he  had  so  often  been 
in  the  past,  but  an  almost  accepted  novelist.  If  he  were 
going  to  carry  this  thing  through  in  the  proper  spirit,  he 
must  remember  the  glory  that  haloed  his  visit. 

A  long  counter  shut  him  off  from  the  littered  spaces  of 
the  office  into  which  he  had  come.  A  boy  in  an  alpaca 
jacket  looked  up  casually  from  his  occupation  of  tying  a 
parcel,  and  took  no  further  notice  of  the  visitor.  But  after 
Jacob  had  knocked  not  too  imperiously  on  the  counter,  a 
young  man  with  a  pen  between  his  teeth  and  a  pencil  be- 
hind his  ear  emerged  from  a  stall  in  the  corner,  came  across 
the  room,  and  emitted  an  interrogatory  grunt. 

"I've  an  appointment  with  Mr.  Goodrich  for  three 
o'clock,"  Jacob  said  defensively.  "My  name's  Stahl." 

The  young  man  nodded  without  removing  his  gag,  and 
returned  to  his  box  to  gather  up  a  pile  of  papers  before 
making  a  leisurely  exit  from  the  office.  He  had  not  dis- 
covered any  sign  of  being  honoured  by  addressing  a  po- 
tential author. 

The  boy  in  alpaca  was  attacking  another  parcel  with 
great  circumspection. 

Jacob  felt  that  it  was  all  painfully  like  his  earlier  ex- 
periences of  looking  for  a  job,  and  the  associations  de- 
pressed him.  One  point,  however,  he  must  stick  to  at  any 
cost,  he  reflected :  he  dared  not  face  Betty  with  any  ac- 
knowledgment that  he  had '  consented  to  bear  part  of  the 
cost  of  publication.  He  reminded  himself  stoically  of  her 
remark  that  there  were  other  publishers  besides  "bally 
Bill"  and  Norman  Goodrich. 


338  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

The  young  man  was  a  long  time  away.  No  doubt  the 
papers  he  had  been  carrying  were  typewritten  letters  that 
were  being  read  and  signed  upstairs,  while  Jacob  was  kept 
waiting.  He  began  to  work  himself  up  to  a  very  credit- 
able impatience.  He  reminded  himself  that  he  was  not 
cadging  for  a  job.  "John  Tristram"  might  be  a  rotten 
book,  but  that  was  no  sort  of  reason  for  keeping  him  hang- 
ing about  this  beastly  office ! 

He  was  quite  determined  to  be  immensely  aloof  and 
stern  by  the  time  the  young  man  came  down  to  say,  "Will 
you  come  up?" 

Even  then  his  manner  hardly  expressed  awe. 

Jacob  submissively  followed  him  upstairs. 


ii 

The  firm  of  Norman  Goodrich  was  revealed  as  a  tall, 
fair  man  of  about  Jacob's  own  age,  and  a  younger  partner 
who  introduced  himself  as  Goodrich,  and  immediately  took 
over  the  preliminary  formalities  of  opening  a  conversation. 

He  dismissed  the  weather  with  a  brief  reference,  and 
then  plunged  into  a  discussion  of  Jacob's  connection  with 
the  Daily  Post,  which  had  been  mentioned  as  casually  as  pos- 
sible— that  had  been  Betty's  suggestion — in  his  first  letter. 

"You've  reviewed  some  of  our  books,"  said  young  Mr. 
Goodrich,  with  apparent  eagerness ;  and  when  Jacob  men- 
tioned two  of  them,  Mr.  Goodrich  remembered  the  re- 
views in  question,  and  also  that  one  of  them  had  been 
quoted  in  certain  of  the  firm's  advertisements. 

"Yes,  I  saw  that  you  had  quoted  me,"  Jacob  said,  and 
followed  the  topic  up  by  a  brief  reflection  on  the  methods 
of  quotation  adopted  by  inferentially  less  scrupulous  pub- 
lishers, who  did  not  hesitate  so  to  hack  a  sentence  from  a 
review  that  the  original  intention  was  entirely  misrepre- 
sented. 

As  a  conversation  the  affair  was  going  splendidly,  but 
there  had  been  no  kind  of  reference  yet  to  "John  Tristram." 
Mr.  Goodrich  might  have  been  passing  the  time  in  a  rail- 


ACHIEVEMENT  339 

way  carriage  for  all  the  relation  his  remarks  bore  to  the  ob- 
ject of  Jacob's  visit. 

And  it  was  Jacob  who,  with  a  sympathetic  thought  of 
Betty  waiting  for  him  in  the  Strand,  tactfully  closed  the 
preliminaries  by  lapsing  into  a  monosyllabic  commentary. 
Mr.  Goodrich  suddenly  dried  up;  and  then  his  partner, 
who  had  taken  no  hand  in  the  criticism  of  advertising  meth- 
ods, looked  up  from  a  sheet  of  foolscap  that  he  had  been 
examining,  and  said : 

"We  like  your  book,  Mr.  Stahl." 

"Good!"  murmured  Jacob,  instantly  abashed.  It  was 
only  by  summoning  a  vivid  thought  of  Betty  that  he  saved 
himself  from  launching  out  into  an  apology  for  his  novel's 
manifest  imperfections.  By  way  of  covering  his  confusion 
he  went  on  quickly:  "I  don't  know  if  the  idea  of  running 
the  story  on  into  another  book  appeals  to  you  at  all  ?  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  I  didn't  know  what  else  to  do,  unless  I  re- 
wrote the  whole  thing  and  cut  out  the  best  parts.  I  don't 
know  if  you  agree  with  me,  but  I  think  the  most  interesting 
chapters  in  the  book  are  those  that  are  really  least  essen- 
tial." 

Mr.  Norman  passed  that  by.  "We  don't  object  to  the 
idea  of  a  sequel,"  he  said,  "if  you  will  give  us  the  option 
of  publishing  it." 

"Oh  yes,  I  should  be  delighted,"  mumbled  Jacob,  se- 
cretly swelling  with  pride  at  the  thought  that  he  was  not 
only  accepted  but  sought  after.  "Though,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,"  he  went  on,  "the  continuation  of  'John  Tristram' 
won't  be  my  next  novel.  I  have  written  nearly  half  of  the 
next  book.  It's  slightly  fantastic,  but  really  I  think  it's 
much  better  stuff  than  this  one.  I  am  rather  keen  on  the 
book  I'm  doing  now,"  he  explained. 

Mr.  Norman  smiled.  "We  should  like  to  see  that  book 
too,"  he  said. 

Jacob  felt  like  a  small  shopkeeper  going  into  the  whole- 
sale. He  had  a  vision  of  enormous  productiveness  that 
presented  him  in  an  entirely  new  role.  "And  as  to  'John 
Tristram,'"  he  said,  "I  couldn't  definitely  pledge  myself 


340  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

to  finish  him  off  in  one  other  volume.  I  think  it  quite 
likely  that  it  will  take  me  at  least  two  more." 

"We  shouldn't  mind  a  trilogy,"  Mr.  Norman  said,  with  a 
faintly  whimsical  glance  at  Jacob;  "but  I  think  it  might  be 
well  to  stop  at  three." 

"Perhaps  it  would,"  Jacob  agreed. 

"There  were  just  one  or  two  suggestions  .  .  ."  Mr.  Nor- 
man went  on,  looking  down  at  his  sheet  of  foolscap. 

"Yes?"  replied  Jacob,  bracing  himself  to  receive  criti- 
cism. 

"We  thought  the  epilogue  a  little  too  apologetic." 

"I'll  omit  it,  if  you  like,"  Jacob  said,  without  hesitation. 

Mr.  Norman  looked  up  with  that  rather  enigmatical  smile 
of  his.  Jacob  had  a  sudden  doubt  whether  he  was  not  being 
altogether  too  ingenuous  and  plastic,  and  determined  to  be 
very  firm  when  the  question  of  terms  was  mooted. 

"We  should  like  to  keep  the  epilogue,"  Mr.  Norman  said 
gravely.  "But  we  thought  one  or  two  expressions  could 
be  cut.  They  might  be  too  tempting  for  reviewers." 

"Oh  yes,  I  understand.  I  hadn't  thought  of  that,  I'll 
admit,"  agreed  Jacob. 

"I've  marked  the  passages,"  said  Mr.  Norman,  particu- 
larising his  own  part  in  the  performance  for  the  first  time. 

"You've  read  it  yourself?"  asked  Jacob. 

"We  all  read  it,"  replied  Mr.  Norman,  leaving  an  impres- 
sion of  unguessed  extensions  in  the  firm. 

The  next  sentence,  however,  added  a  necessary  third  to 
explain  the  suggestion  of  multitude.  "Our  reader  queried 
one  or  two  discrepancies,"  he  said;  and  proceeded  to  enu- 
merate them.  They  were  not  important,  but  Jacob  was 
gravely  distressed. 

"Oh,  good  Lord,  yes,  that  was  an  awful  bloomer !"  he  ad- 
mitted, getting  very  hot  when  it  was  pointed  out  to  him 
that  his  hero  had  given  up  half  a  return  ticket  on  coming 
back  from  a  journey  that  had  begun  as  a  bus-ride.  "I  don't 
know  how  on  earth  I  came  to  make  a  mistake  like  that,"  he 
said.  "It's  just  the  sort  of  thing  I  hate  in  a  novel.  I'm 
particularly  keen  on  accuracy  in  details  of  that  sort."  He 


ACHIEVEMENT  341 

wanted  to  have  the  manuscript  back  at  once  and  alter  it. 
He  had  horrible  doubts  as  to  whether  he  had  not  made 
other  mistakes  of  the  same  kind. 

"That's  the  only  serious  discrepancy,"  Mr.  Norman  gently 
advised  him.  "The  other  notes  are  of  typist's  errors,  and 
I  think  you  changed  the  name  of  one  of  your  minor  char- 
acters half-way  through." 

"I  thought  I'd  altered  that,"  expostulated  Jacob. 

"The  old  name  has  slipped  in  once  or  twice,"  said  Mr. 
Norman.  "We  thought  you  might  like  to  take  the  manu- 
script back  with  you  and  look  it  through  again." 

"Yes,  certainly,  I  will,"  Jacob  said.  "Or  perhaps  you'd 
post  it  to  me,"  he  added,  remembering  that  he  must  not 
let  Betty  see  him  coming  with  that  parcel  in  his  hand.  "It's 
rather  a  lump  to  carry,"  he  explained,  "and  I'm  going  on 
somewhere." 

Mr.  Norman  nodded. 

"By  the  way,  when  did  you  think  of  publishing  the  book?" 
asked  Jacob,  a  little  anxiously. 

"We  might  get  it  out  by  the  middle  of  January,"  replied 
Mr.  Goodrich,  suddenly  taking  a  hand,  but  looking  at  his 
partner  for  confirmation. 

Jacob  had  had  a  wild  hope  that  it  might  be  sooner,  but 
he  did  not  allow  his  disappointment  to  appear. 

"It  takes  time,  of  course,"  he  said. 

"Christmas  coming  in  between,"  explained  Mr.  Goodrich 
elliptically. 

An  awkward  pause  followed,  and  Jacob  realised  that  at 
last  the  important  topic  was  to  be  broached. 

"About  terms,"  began  Mr.  Norman  bravely;  and  his 
partner  nobly  seconded  the  effort  by  adding: 

"I'm  afraid,  as  it's  a  first  book,  we  should  hardly  be 
justified  in  making  an  advance." 

"Oh  no,  of  course  not,"  agreed  Jacob  at  once. 

"But  we  could  give  you  a  royalty,  beginning  at,  say,  five 
per  cent.,  and  rising  after  the  sale  of  the  first  five  hundred 
copies,"  Mr.  Norman  appended. 


342  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

Jacob  made  an  effort.  "Is  that  on  the  price  you  sell  the 
book  at?"  he  asked. 

"Oh  no ;  on  the  full  published  price  of  six  shillings,"  Mr. 
Goodrich  told  him. 

"Thirteen  copies  counting  as  twelve,"  supplemented  his 
partner  softly. 

Jacob  realised  that,  if  he  was  going  to  justify  his  busi- 
ness training,  the  time  for  action  had  arrived,  and  must 
be  seized  before  the  opportunity  slipped  from  him.  "What 
would  Farmer  have  done?"  Jacob  asked  himself.  Jacob 
could  picture  Farmer  quite  convincingly.  He  would  have 
put  his  hands  in  his  pockets,  stuck  out  his  fat  little  legs, 
screwed  up  the  side  of  his  mouth,  shaken  his  head  with  great 
earnestness,  and  said :  "Not  good  enough.  Now,  look  here, 
I  want  .  .  ."  And  he  would  probably  have  got  it. 

Jacob  sighed  and  stood  up.  "I  suppose  I  couldn't  expect 
more  than  that  on  a  first  novel,"  he  said.  "I  haven't  the 
least  idea  what  sort  of  terms  an  author  gets." 

"The  royalty  would  rise  to  fifteen  per  cent,  after  the  sale 
of  the  first  thousand  copies,"  remarked  young  Mr.  Good- 
rich hopefully. 

"I'm  sure  it's  perfectly  all  right,"  Jacob  said.  "We  shall 
have  some  sort  of  an  agreement,  I  suppose?" 

"Oh  yes,  we  shall  have  an  agreement,"  replied  Mr.  Nor- 
man. He  might  have  spoken  in  the  same  tone  if  Jacob  had 
asked  if  the  book  was  to  be  printed  in  English.  He  was 
quite  grave,  but  he  conveyed  an  impression  of  being  faintly 
amused. 

in 

Jacob  found  himself  confronted  with  the  necessity  for 
giving  Betty  an  illustrated,  verbatim  report  when  they  were 
alone  in  their  corner  of  the  honoured  basement.  "What  did 
they  say  to  you?  What  were  they  like?"  were  her  two 
questions. 

Jacob  would  have  preferred  to  produce  a  general  im- 
pression of  the  interview  by  less  precise  methods,  but  he 
did  his  best. 


ACHIEVEMENT  343 

"I  suppose  it's  all  right,"  was  Betty's  summary. 

"I  don't  see  that  we  could  have  expected  more,"  said 
Jacob. 

"I  wish  they  could  have  published  it  before  January," 
said  Betty. 

They  hesitated  for  a  time  over  a  calculation  of  how  much 
they  might  make  if  "John  Tristram"  sold  one,  five,  or,  with 
an  ambitious  leap,  twenty  thousand  copies.  Jacob  con- 
scientiously pointed  out  the  absurdity  of  the  last  estimate, 
but  Betty  could  see  nothing  outrageous  in  it,  and  clam- 
oured for  figures. 

"About  eight  hundred  pounds,  I  think,"  was  Jacob's  cal- 
culation ;  and  then  he  proceeded  to  arrive  at  a  more  precise 
estimate  with  the  aid  of  a  pencil,  a  little  worried  by  the 
intricacies  of  "thirteen  as  twelve,"  a  trade  convention  of 
discount  that  he  already  knew  by  repute. 

They  had  frankly  surrendered  themselves  to  exultation 
before  they  had  finished  tea. 

"In  a  way,  you  know,"  Jacob  said,  with  a  thought  for 
the  future,  "we  shan't  touch  this  level  again.  It  seems 
ridiculous  now,  but  the  time  will  come  when  we  shan't  even 
get  excited  when  we  see  a  novel  of  mine  in  print." 

"Aren't  you  dying  to  get  the  proofs?"  interrupted  Betty. 

"Rather.  I  can't  imagine  quite  what  it  will  look  like.  It 
doesn't  seem  possible  that  it  will  look  just  like  an  ordinary 
novel.  But  it  will,  of  course,  and  we  shall  get  used  to  it, 
and,  as  I  said,  we  shall  probably  never  get  quite  as  much 
excitement  and  .  .  .  and  sense  of  achievement  out  of  any 
other  success  as  we  are  getting  now." 

He  wanted,  indeed,  to  hold  the  thought  of  his  achieve- 
ment very  clearly  and  very  persistently — to  realise  his  pres- 
ent success  in  relation  to  all  his  past  life.  He  became  auto- 
biographical, and  gave  Betty  a  sketch  of  his  less  literary 
past,  and  of  his  constant  and,  as  it  seemed,  futile,  desire 
to  write  a  novel.  "Not  a  great  or  even  a  successful  novel," 
he  said,  "but  just  a  novel  of  reasonable  attainment  that 
would  be  received  with  a  certain  amount  of  attention." 

Betty  thought  he  would  do  better  than  that,  but  he  pre- 


344  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

f erred  to  enjoy  the  satisfaction  of  what  he  regarded  as  the 
substantial  fact  rather  than  to  indulge  in  gloriously  im- 
possible dreams. 

"I  feel  as  if  I  should  like  to  talk  to  all  the  people  I  used 
to  know,"  he  announced ;  "or,  rather,  I  should  like  them  all 
to  see  a  decently  favourable  notice  of  the  book  when  it 
appears." 

"I  expect  no  end  of  people  will  be  wanting  to  know  you 
again,"  said  Betty,  with  a  fine  shade  of  doubt  clouding  her 
happiness. 

Jacob  pushed  the  suggestion  aside.  '"One  or  two,  pos- 
sibly," he  thought ;  and  so  came  to  face  the  probability  that 
one  person  would  almost  certainly  write  to  him. 

"My  brother,  for  example,"  he  said. 

"I  never  can  remember  that  you  have  a  brother,"  Betty 
said.  "Tell  me  about  him.  Did  you  quarrel?  Why  have 
you  never  written  to  him  ?" 

"I  don't  know,"  returned  Jacob.  "We've  never  actually 
quarrelled,  but  we've  never  been  friends.  He's  so  con- 
foundedly clever.  He's  just  exactly  everything  I'm  not — 
tremendously  well  read,  and  sound,  and  accurate,  and  pains- 
taking." 

"Why  didn't  you  get  on  together?"  Betty  asked. 

"Well,  he's  older  than  I  am,"  Jacob  explained ;  "and  he's 
always  been  a  success.  My  father  left  most  of  his  money  to 
me,  because  he  knew  I  was  handicapped ;  and  Eric  made  his 
own  way — he's  in  the  Home  Civil — and  got  on,  and  I  lost 
the  money  I  had,  and  failed  at  everything." 

Betty  took  his  hand  under  the  table.  "You  haven't  failed 
now,"  she  said. 

"No,  darling;  but  I  should  have,  without  you,"  he  said. 
"But,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  my  success  won't  count  for  much 
with  Eric.  He'll  criticise  me,  very  justly,  but  very  hardly, 
because  he'll  judge  me  by  a  standard  that's  obviously  too 
high  for  me." 

"What  would  he  say  about  us  ?"  Betty  asked. 

"Lord  knows!"  returned  Jacob.  "He  isn't  a  bit  pious; 
he  doesn't  believe  in  your  religion,  and  that  sort  of  thing, 


ACHIEVEMENT  345 

but  he'll  probably  think  it  was  inexpedient  or  something. 
And  then,  of  course,  he's  always  been  very  respectable,  even 
though  he  wouldn't  admit  it." 

"He's  married,  isn't  he  ?"  asked  Betty ;  and  then :  "What's 
his  wife  like?" 

"She's  nice,  rather.  They  had  a  baby  that  died — they 
may  have  another  by  this  time — and  I  got  to  know  her 
rather  well  then.  I  could  make  her  understand  about  you, 
I  think." 

"I  wonder,"  was  all  Betty's  comment. 

"I  don't  know  why  we  should  spoil  our  entertainment  by 
talking  about  Eric  and  his  wife,"  Jacob  went  on,  conscious 
of  the  note  of  depression  that  had  come  into  Betty's  voice. 
"I'm  certainly  not  going  to  write  to  them  unless  they  write 
to  me." 

"They  will,"  asserted  Betty. 

Jacob  shrugged  his  shoulders. 

"I  can't  quite  understand  now,"  she  persisted,  "why  you 
dropped  them  so  completely." 

Jacob  thought  for  a  moment  before  he  said :  "Just  me,  I 
suppose.  I  always  put  off  writing  to  them.  It  was  another 
case  of  those  boots  at  Trevarrian." 


IV 

"I  suppose  we'd  better  be  going,"  remarked  Betty  pres- 
ently. 

"Where  to  ?  We  can't  go  home — to-night,"  expostulated 
Jacob. 

Betty  hesitated.  "What  else  can  we  do?"  she  asked. 

"Let's  go  to  the  Palace,"  suggested  Jacob.  "You've  never 
been  there.  Surely  we  can  go  a  little  buster  to-night?" 

"I  was  thinking  of  Mrs.  Parmenter,"  Betty  said. 

Jacob  had  forgotten  that  lady  completely  during  the  past 
three  hours,  but  at  the  mention  of  her  name,  he  was  plunged 
back  into  the  experiences  of  the  three  days  that  had  inter- 
vened between  his  receipt  of  Norman  Goodrich's  letter  and 
his  present  state  of  ecstatic  success.  The  experience  had 


346  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

been  assimilated,  and  had  apparently  had  no  effect  upon  him. 
He  remembered  his  musings  in  that  ghastly  room  at  Monta- 
gue Place,  as  the  well-intentioned  might  remember  the  fer- 
vour of  some  old  vow. 

"Does  that  matter?"  he  asked. 

Betty  knitted  her  forehead.  "It  seems  rather  heartless," 
she  said. 

"It  isn't  as  though  we  should  be  doing  her  any  sort  of 
good  by  going  home,"  argued  Jacob.  "And  we  can  hardly 
pretend  that  we're  particularly  cast  down  and  bereaved  by 
our  loss." 

"I  know,"  Betty  admitted.     "It  isn't  that." 

"Can  you  tell  me  what  it  is?" 

"It's  just  the  way  one  feels  about  it." 

"But  you  don't  feel  like  that  about  it,  really."  He  was 
ready  to  warm  up  to  an  attack  upon  the  general  convention, 
when  he  remembered  that  only  yesterday  he  had  had  to 
admit  the  fault  of  his  logic  from  similar  premisses.  He 
broke  off  abruptly. 

"I  wonder  if  there  is  anything  in  it,"  he  said  in  another 
tone. 

Betty  looked  quickly  up  at  him.  "I  expect  it's  only  a 
superstition,"  she  said.  "I  don't  mind.  Let's  go." 

"We  won't  if  you'd  sooner  not,"  he  said  earnestly.  "I 
don't  know  that  I'm  frightfully  keen." 

They  hung  on  that  for  a  moment,  and  then  Jacob  said :  "I 
was  quite  wrong  yesterday — about  watching  her,  you  know. 
I  may  be  wrong  about  this  too.  Only,  do  you  honestly  feel 
that  we  ought  not  to  go — that  there  is  anything  'heartless' 
in  our  going?  If  we  were  Catholics,  and  ought  to  be  de- 
voting the  time  to  praying  for  her  soul,  it  would  be  rather 
different,  although  that  can  be  managed,  I  believe,  at  quite 
small  expense.  .  .  ." 

She  did  not  allow  him  to  frame  the  alternative.  "I  don't," 
she  said.  "It's  only  superstition.  Come  on." 

Jacob  pondered  her  decision  as  they  walked  up  towards 
Charing  Cross,  and  presently  came  out  with  his  explanation 


ACHIEVEMENT  347 

of  the  difference  between  her  attitudes  of  to-day  and  yester- 
day. 

"I  think  you're  generally  right  when  it's  a  question  of 
practical  conduct,"  he  said,  having  framed  his  statement 
carefully  in  his  mind,  "even  though  you  seem  to  be  guided 
by  old  superstitions;  but  when  you  come  to  what  is  really 
a  theoretical  point,  like  this  going  to  a  music-hall  to-night, 
or" — he  looked  at  her  whimsically — "the  question  of  our 
being  married,  then,  I  think,  you're  just  as  likely  to  be  wrong 
as  right.  Your  intuition  does  not  help  you." 

Betty  smiled.    "I  dare  say  not,"  she  said. 


Jacob  found  the  re-reading  and  correction  of  his  manu- 
script a  tedious  and  distasteful  labour.  His  sentences  were 
becoming  wearisomely  familiar,  and  the  remembrance  that 
within  a  few  weeks  he  would  see  them  perpetuated  in  type, 
rilled  him  with  terrified  apprehension.  And  yet  he  could  not 
bring  himself  to  make  any  drastic  alterations  to  his  story.  It 
was  all  stale  to  him,  and  although  he  might  criticise  it  still 
in  a  kind  of  hopeless  despair,  he  had  not  a  word  to  add  to 
it,  not  a  single  inspiration  for  an  alternative  treatment  of 
the  episodes  he  chiefly  condemned.  Moreover,  his  inertia 
compelled  him  to  regard  these  typewritten  pages  as  in  some 
way  a  finished  and  unalterable  product.  He  felt  that  if  he 
once  began  any  attempt  at  rewriting,  he  would  have  no 
choice  but  to  begin  the  whole  story  again  in  another  man- 
ner, preferably  that  in  which  he  was  treating  his  next  book. 
His  first  essay  in  fiction  already  appeared  to  him  as  some- 
thing he  had  wonderfully  outgrown.  He  consoled  himself 
with  the  thought  that  his  next  book  would  be  infinitely 
better. 

Betty  seemed  to  fail  him  in  this  crisis.  She  would  not 
lend  a  sympathetic  ear  to  his  perfectly  sincere  condemnation 
of  "John  Tristram."  Jacob  believed  that  if  he  could  speak 
out  all  his  thoughts  concerning  what  he  regarded  as  the 
amateurishness  and  general  incompetence  displayed  in  his 


348  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

first  novel,  he  might  work  off  his  chagrin  and  perhaps  suffer 
a  reaction.  But  Betty  manifested  signs  of  impatience  when- 
ever he  began  to  unload  the  masses  of  adverse  criticism  he 
accumulated  during  his  reading  of  the  manuscript.  "You 
can't  judge  it  now,"  she  said.  "You're  tired  of  it." 

"I've  half  a  mind  not  to  publish  it,"  Jacob  once  desper- 
ately ventured,  when  she  refused  to  hear  his  strictures  of 
the  maligned  book.  He  was  not  quite  in  earnest.  He 
wanted  chiefly  to  convince  her  that  he  was  perfectly  sincere 
in  his  attitude  of  depreciation,  and  to  prepare  her  in  some 
sort  for  the  book's  reception ;  but  she  took  him  at  his  word. 

"I  don't  know  what  you  think  is  going  to  become  of 
us,"  she  said,  "if  you  never  publish  any  of  the  books  you 
write." 

He  reassured  her  on  that  occasion,  but  he  remembered  the 
essential  complaint  implied  when  an  apparently  unrelated 
topic  came  up  for  discussion  the  next  day. 

Betty  produced  her  suggestion  with  an  evident  hesita- 
tion, some  three  or  four  days  after  Mrs.  Parmenter's 
funeral. 

"I  suppose  you  wouldn't  like  to  do  this?"  she  began, 
apropos  of  nothing  in  particular. 

"I  dare  say  I  should,"  Jacob  said,  smiling.    "What  is  it  ?" 

Betty  frowned,  and  looked  up  at  him  doubtfully.  "I 
don't  think  Freda  will  be  able  to  keep  on  the  boarding-house 
— alone,"  she  ventured. 

Jacob  instantly  guessed  her  project,  but  he  preferred  to 
shirk  the  unpleasant  issue  as  long  as  possible. 

"Why  doesn't  she  go  back  to  the  stage  ?"  he  asked.  "I've 
always  thought  that  keeping  a  boarding-house  was  quite  out 
of  her  line.  It's  a  rotten  job  for  anyone." 

"She  can't  get  any  engagements,"  Betty  said.  "She  tried 
tremendously  hard  before  she  came  to  Montague  Place,  and, 
as  she  says,  if  it  was  difficult  then,  it  will  be  ever  so  much 
harder  now." 

"Hasn't  she  got  any  people?"  prevaricated  Jacob. 
"What's  her  father  doing?  He  used  to  be  pretty  pros- 
perous." 


ACHIEVEMENT  849 

"She  wouldn't  go  to  him,"  replied  Betty  firmly.  She 
knew  quite  certainly  that  Jacob  had  anticipated  her  sugges- 
tion, and  was  bitterly  averse  to  it,  but  she  meant  at  least  to 
present  its  more  salient  advantages. 

"Besides,  she  doesn't  want  to  leave  Montague  Place,"  she 
went  on  with  determination.  "And  I  do  think  you  might 
discuss  my  suggestion.  We  haven't  settled  anything." 

"I  haven't  heard  what  it  is  yet,"  remonstrated  Jacob. 

She  overlooked  that  feeble  dissimulation.  "We  should 
save  a  lot  of  money,"  she  said.  "You  could  have  a  room  all 
to  yourself,  and  it  would  give  me  something  to  do." 

Jacob  chose  to  select  the  first  of  her  inducements  as  the 
most  easily  controvertible.  "We  aren't  so  terribly  hard  up 
as  all  that,"  he  said  pettishly ;  and  then  remembered  her  com- 
plaint of  the  day  before.  "You  haven't  any  real  faith  in 
me,  you  see,"  he  protested.  "Really,  I  don't  think  I've  done 
so  badly.  We  are  getting  nearly  two-fifty  a  year  out  of 
the  Daily  Post,  and  I  suppose  I'm  bound  to  make  some- 
thing out  of  'John  Tristram,'  and  'The  Creature'  will  be 
finished  in  another  month  or  two.  But  I  suppose  you  think 
'Tristram'  will  be  an  awful  frost?  You  don't  think  I  shall 
ever  make  enough  money  to  keep  us." 

"It's  only  just  now,"  Betty  tried  to  assure  him.  "I  know 
you  will  make  heaps  of  money.  But  until  your  books  become 
known  .  .  ." 

"You  think  'Tristram'  will  be  a  failure  then?"  he  put  in. 

"I  don't ;  but  you  won't  get  anything  out  of  it  for  months 
and  months.  You  said  so  yourself." 

"But  we've  plenty  to  go  on  with  till  we  do  get  something 
out  of  it.  I've  still  got  over  fifty  pounds  in  the  bank." 

"Why  do  you  object  to  the  idea  of  our  going  to  Montague 
Place?"  asked  Betty,  with  a  determined  reversion  to  essen- 
tials. 

"I  loathe  the  place,"  Jacob  said  with  decision,  "and  I 
loathe  the  idea  of  your  cooking  and  housekeeping  for  a  lot 
of  rotten  German  boarders." 

"If  7  don't  mind  it  .•  .  ."  began  Betty. 

"You  used  to  hate  it,"  he  retorted. 


350  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

"Not  till  you  came." 

"I  should  still  be  there." 

"It  would  be  quite  different  now." 

"I  don't  see  why  it  should,"  he  said. 

"I  want  an  occupation,"  she  returned.  "You  won't  con- 
sider that." 

"Are  you  so  tired  of  being  with  me  ?" 

"You  can't  understand,"  was  Betty's  hopeless  comment. 

"I  do,  I  do,"  Jacob  asserted.  "I  know  it's  often  very 
deadly  for  you  in  rooms  like  this,  but  this  sort  of  thing  isn't 
going  on.  I'm  doing  my  best  to  make  money.  I'm  a  help- 
less sort  of  ass,  I  know,  in  many  ways,  but  I  believe,  if  I 
have  a  fair  chance,  that  I  shall  be  able  to  make  a  decent 
living  by  writing.  You've  always  encouraged  me  to  believe 
so,  anyway.  Why  have  you  suddenly  changed  your  mind  ?" 

"I  haven't,"  Betty  said. 

"Well,  then,  can't  you  endure  this  for  a  few  months 
longer?"  he  asked. 

They  were  nearer  a  quarrel  at  that  moment  than  they  had 
ever  been,  and  Jacob,  in  the  middle  of  his  argument,  was 
suddenly  dismayed  to  realise  the  bitterness  of  his  tone.  He 
stopped  abruptly,  but  he  could  not  immediately  recover  his 
equanimity.  His  mind  still  ran  on  like  a  machine,  presenting 
all  the  injustices  of  Betty's  proposals,  her  lack  of  faith  in 
him,  her  willingness  to  take  him  back  to  a  place  he  hated, 
her  failure  to  understand  that  distraction  from  little  worries 
was  absolutely  necessary  to  him  if  he  was  to  put  his  best 
work  into  the  novel  he  was  writing. 

He  stood  by  the  mantelpiece,  making  a  great  effort  to 
control  his  irritation,  and  to  check  that  mechanical  unrolling 
of  his  case  against  Betty  and  her  proposal. 

Betty,  in  the  armchair,  had  taken  up  her  work — she  was 
knitting  a  pair  of  socks  for  him — and  looked  down,  reso- 
lutely silent,  at  her  clicking  needles. 

"Betty  darling,  I'm  sorry,"  Jacob  said,  after  a  pause. 
"I'm  quite  reasonable  now.  I  won't  be  peevish  again." 

Betty  finished  a  row  and  withdrew  a  needle,  then  she 
looked  up  at  him  and  said: 


ACHIEVEMENT  351 

"Would  you  like  to  go  back  to  Cornwall  ?" 

He  could  not  adjust  himself  at  once  to  her  new  attitude. 
"Is  that  an  alternative  ?"  he  asked. 

Betty  looked  down  at  the  oblong  padded  cushion  that 
decorated  the  arm  of  her  chair,  and  began  to  stab  it  with 
her  free  knitting-needle. 

"I  don't  think  I  should  mind  so  much  out  of  London," 
she  said. 

"Do  you  mean  that  you're  .  .  .  worrying  .  .  .  about  us 
again?"  asked  Jacob. 

"Not  exactly,"  Betty  said,  gently  forcing  her  needle  into 
the  padding  with  a  little  click  and  then  withdrawing  it 
again.  "But  I  do  want  an  occupation.  When  I'm  by  myself 
I  can't  help  thinking  about  things.  I'm  not  worrying  ex- 
actly, not  in  the  same  way ;  but  I  get  depressed  with  nothing 
to  do,  and  then  everything  seems  wrong." 

"I  suppose  it  wouldn't  be  possible  for  you  to  help  to  run 
the  boarding-house  from  here  ?"  Jacob  suggested. 

"I  hate  to  feel  that  you're  here  alone,  with  no  one  to  look 
after  you,"  replied  Betty;  and  then  she  looked  up  with  a 
smile  and  added :  "Besides,  I  thought  you  hated  the  idea  of 
my  working  there." 

"So  I  do,"  replied  Jacob,  with  decision.  "I  hate  it,  but 
I  want  to  do  what's  best  for  you." 

"I  don't  believe  you'd  find  it  so  disagreeable  at  Montague 
Place,"  Betty  said,  "if  we  had  a  sitting-room  to  ourselves." 

Jacob  reflected  for  a  moment  before  he  said  quietly :  "No, 
I  won't  go  back  there,  dear.  I've  got  a  more  capable  imag- 
ination than  you  in  many  ways.  I  can  picture  the  facts 
coldly,  and,  I  think,  accurately ;  you  always  colour  them  one 
way  or  the  other  to  suit  your  mood." 

Betty  had  returned  to  her  knitting.  "Well?"  she  en- 
couraged him. 

"At  Montague  Place  I  should  have  to  mix  with  the  board- 
ers at  meal-times,  certainly,  and  almost  certainly  you  would 
want  me  to  go  down  in  the  evenings  and  at  other  times  as 
well.  You  might  begin  by  saying  you  wouldn't,  but  we 
should  soon  slip  into  that.  And,  apart  altogether  from  its 


352  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

being  a  beastly,  ambiguous  position  to  put  me  into,  I  can't 
afford  to  spend  myself  in  little  worries  and  irritations  of 
that  sort.  This  writing  business  is  a  funny  game,  dear. 
I've  only  realised  it  myself  in  the  last  few  months.  I  dare 
say  many  men  and  more  women  can  just  take  it  up,  work 
for  so  many  hours  a  day,  and  live  any  sort  of  life  for  the 
rest  of  the  time.  I  can't.  I  suppose  it's  an  admission  of 
weakness,  but  my  mind  seems  to  tire  so  quickly.  I  take  a 
lot  out  of  myself  when  I'm  trying  to  write — even  reviews — 
and  if  I  don't  get  a  certain  amount  of  ease  and  comfort  and 
happiness  in  between  times,  what  little  capacity  I  have,  goes. 
I've  no  ideas,  you  see ;  I  haven't  the  blessed  ability  of  great 
men,  the  power  to  shut  off  my  mind  into  compartments,  to 
put  down  one  idea,  forget  it  temporarily,  and  take  up  an- 
other. If  I'd  had  that  sort  of  mind,  we  shouldn't  have  been 
here  now.  You've  got  to  understand,  darling,  that  you've 
taken  over  a  rather  poor  sort  of  fool,  who's  got  to  be  hu- 
moured in  odd  ways  if  he's  ever  going  to  make  a  decent  liv- 
ing out  of  writing  novels.  Do  you  regret  it?" 

Betty  put  down  her  knitting  and  held  out  her  arms  to  him. 
"I'm  sorry,  darling;  I  won't  be  silly  any  more,"  she  said. 
"I  do  understand,  really;  and  I  know  you're  going  to  do 
wonderful  things." 

He  went  and  knelt  by  her  chair.  "Not  wonderful,"  he 
said. 

"You  are,"  she  insisted. 

"Do  you  realise  that  we  were  very  near  quarrelling?"  he 
asked  her  a  few  minutes  later. 

But  Betty  denied  that  they  had  even  been  within  sight  of 
a  real  quarrel. 

They  agreed  that  they  might  go  down  to  Cornwall  after 
"John  Tristram"  was  published.  As  Jacob  explained,  the 
weekly  meeting  at  the  Daily  Post  offices  had  become  a  pure 
formality.  Mr.  Gresswell  gave  instructions,  and  the  re- 
viewers agreed.  And  so  far  as  he  himself  was  concerned, 
the  instructions  might  equally  well  be  given  on  a  slip  of 
paper. 


XVII 

REINSTATEMENT 


THEIR  second  Christmas  Day  together  was  not  quite  as 
neglected  as  the  first  had  been.  Mrs.  Lynneker  wrote 
to  Betty  and  sent  her  a  cheque  for  five  pounds — "to  get  any- 
thing you  may  want,  dear" — and  save  for  a  short  note  on 
the  peculiar  spiritual  opportunities  provided  at  that  season, 
she  made  no  reference  to  her  niece's  moral  obliquities.  Also 
Hilda  wrote  from  her  Rectory  fastness  a  somewhat  effusive 
letter,  explaining  her  long  silence  by  the  fact  that  she  was 
expecting  "an  event  early  in  January,"  and  reminding  Betty 
that  she  had  never  written  or  even  sent  her  address,  which 
had  been  obtained  at  last  from  Aunt  Mary. 

Jacob  was  inclined  to  be  optimistic  on  the  strength  of 
these  acknowledgments.  He  never  lost  an  opportunity  of 
reassuring  Betty  as  to  the  rectitude  of  their  position,  and 
found  a  text  on  the  occasion  more  especially  in  Hilda's  let- 
ter. He  claimed  that  Mrs.  Lynneker  had  already  been  won. 

Betty  smiled  incredulously.  "I  would  sooner  Hilda  left 
it  alone  than  go  half-way  like  this,"  she  said. 

"Why?    What  more  could  you  expect?"  asked  Jacob. 

"You  don't  think  it's  the  sort  of  letter  she  would  have 
written  if — if — well,  if  we  had  been  married,  do  you?" 
replied  Betty.  "There's  no  hint  of  my  going  to  see  her,  for 
instance." 

"I  think  that's  comprehensible  enough,"  Jacob  said.  "I've 
never  pretended  that  the  sort  of  people  she  mixes  with 
haven't  a  perfectly  logical  prejudice  against  people  like  us. 
She  couldn't  very  well  ask  you  down  there,  and  she  knows 
you  wouldn't  come  if  she  did ;  but  evidently  she  herself  has 

353 


354  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

got  nothing  against  you  now.    She  wants  to  be  nice  to  you." 

Betty  looked  down  at  the  letter.  "It's  Christmas-time," 
she  said  quietly,  "and  poor  old  Hilda  is  very  likely  wonder- 
ing just  now  whether  she'll  ever  see  another.  I  can  under- 
stand that  she  wanted  to  make  her  peace  with  me." 

Jacob  thought  Betty  was  a  little  bitter.  "Shan't  you  write 
to  her  ?"  he  asked. 

"Of  course  I  shall  write!"  she  said,  with  a  flash  of  as- 
tonishment at  his  lack  of  comprehension. 

Jacob  gave  up  that  problem  as  beyond  his  powers.  "Are 
you  still  unhappy  about  it  sometimes?"  he  said. 

"Well,  naturally,"  she  returned,  without  embarrassment. 

"I  mean,  do  you  worry?"  he  insisted. 

"In  a  way  I  do." 

Jacob  reflected  for  a  moment,  and  then  said:  "Yes,  but 
it's  an  extraordinarily  different  way." 

"I  suppose  it  is,"  she  admitted.  "I've  got  used  to  the 
idea,  perhaps ;  and  Freda  and  I  often  talk  about  it." 

"She's  a  good  sort,"  Jacob  said;  and  then  the  topic  that 
had  once  been  of  such  overwhelming  importance  was  di- 
verted to  a  discussion  of  Freda  and  her  boarding-house. 
She  was  coming  to  dinner  with  them  the  next  evening. 
Christmas  Day  was  on  a  Sunday  that  year. 

Mrs.  Parmenter  had  made  a  will  on  one  of  her  death- 
beds, and  had  left  all  her  possessions,  including  the  furni- 
ture of  Montague  Place  and  her  balance  at  the  bank,  to 
Freda,  for  whom  the  old  lady  had  evidenced  a  decided  affec- 
tion during  her  illness.  No  mention  had  been  made  of 
Betty's  investment  of  capital,  and  when  Jacob  had  first 
heard  of  this  testament  some  three  weeks  after  Mrs.  Par- 
menter's  death,  he  had  been  inclined  to  resent  that  omission. 
But  Betty  had  overruled  him.  Freda  knew  nothing  what- 
ever about  it,  she  had  explained,  and  implied  that  she  was 
never  to  know.  Jacob  had  thought  the  silence  even  more 
generous  than  the  gift. 

'  The  whole  affair  had  been  quite  informal.    The  will  had 
never  been  proved. 

And  now  Freda  had  had  an  offer  of  two  hundred  and 


ACHIEVEMENT  355 

fifty  pounds  for  the  furniture  and  goodwill  of  the  house  in 
Montague  Place,  the  goodwill  including  some  six  or  seven 
actual  boarders,  apparently  satisfied  with  their  present  con- 
dition. The  capitalist  was  the  Mrs.  Letchworth,  the  pro- 
prietress of  the  "little  place  in  St.  John's  Wood,"  who  had 
once  sought  a  partnership  with  Mrs.  Parmenter,  and  had 
been  refused  as  lacking  in  gentility. 

Jacob  was  in  favour  of  accepting  the  offer.  Nothing  more 
had  been  said  of  Betty's  proposal  to  join  forces  with  Freda, 
but  he  felt  that  it  would  be  a  relief  when  the  scheme  was  no 
longer  practicable.  And  as  a  companion  Freda  would  be 
more  available  than  ever,  for  Mrs.  Letchworth  was  not  too 
generously  supplied  with  available  capital,  and  fifty  pounds 
of  the  purchase  money  was  to  be  paid  in  kind.  Freda  was  to 
have  board  and  lodging — Jacob's  old  bedroom — for  twelve 
months  in  lieu  of  cash.  She  was  quite  confident  that,  with 
a  year's  leisure  and  a  capital  of  two  hundred  pounds,  she 
would  be  able  to  find  work. 

"I  have  been  lucky,  haven't  I?"  she  said,  when  they  dis- 
cussed the  offer  after  dinner  on  Christmas  night. 

"You  deserved  it,"  Betty  said. 

Jacob  echoed  the  compliment  half-heartedly.  He  was 
thinking  that  Freda's  luck  was  all  of  Betty's  bringing,  and 
that  some  of  it  represented  a  solid  gift  of  money. 

He  could  not  keep  that  thought  to  himself  when  Freda 
had  gone. 

"She  would  have  done  the  same  for  me,"  was  Betty's 
answer.  "In  fact  she  did,  practically.  When  we  first  talked 
over  the  idea  of  my  working  with  her  in  Montague  Place, 
she  insisted  that  I  should  go  half-shares  with  her,  although 
I  was  bringing  nothing  into  the  business.  Besides,  poor 
Freda  hasn't  been  half  as  lucky  as  I  have,"  she  concluded, 
and  so  successfully  turned  the  conversation. 

Jacob  reflected  that  women's  method  of  doing  business 
was  hardly  one  that  would  be  approved  by  the  lawyers.  And 
Mrs.  Letchworth  had  not  made  any  inquiries  as  to  Freda's 
title  to  the  furniture.  It  was  certainly  a  risky  method  in  a 
civilisation  so  dominated  by  the  legal  profession;  but  how 


356  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

admirable  and  economically  the  system  worked,  founded, 
as  it  was,  on  a  basis  of  confidence  and  generosity ! 


ii 

"John  Tristram"  was  published  on  the  nineteenth  of 
January. 

Jacob  had  expended  a  guinea  on  a  subscription  to  a  press- 
cutting  agency,  but  he  modestly  explained  to  Betty  that  it 
would  be  no  good  expecting  reviews  for  at  least  ten  days 
after  publication.  "It's  only  novels  by  well-known  writers 
that  get  noticed  at  once,"  he  told  her.  He  counted  the 
Daily  Post,  however,  as  a  possible  exception. 

The  advance  copy  of  "John  Tristram"  had  been  among 
the  books  in  the  office  on  the  previous  Monday  afternoon. 
There  had  been  few  books  to  sen<4  out  that  day — publishers 
were  presumably  still  waiting  for  the  final  dissipation  of 
holiday  conditions — and  when  only  fiction,  represented  by 
five  novels,  remained  to  be  dealt  with,  Mr.  Gresswell  swept 
them  together  with  a  casual  glance,  and,  turning  to  Jacob, 
said:  "I  don't  know  whether  you  would  care  to  look 
through  these  and  see  if  any  of  them  are  worth  a  notice." 

Jacob  blushed.  "Oh  yes,"  he  stammered  at  last;  "four 
of  them  I  might.  I  don't  think  I'm  quite  the  proper  person 
to  do  the  other." 

Mr.  Gresswell  looked  slightly  puzzled  and  annoyed. 
"Why  not?"  he  asked,  and  looked  down  at  the  title  of  the 
books  on  the  table. 

Jacob  felt  that  he  was  making  the  occasion  altogether  too 
important.  The  one  other  reviewer  who  had  come  to  the 
office  that  day  was  looking  at  him  quizzically.  "I  wrote  it," 
Jacob  blurted  out.  "A  first  effort." 

Mr.  Gresswell  had  spotted  "John  Tristram"  at  last.  "Oh, 
I  see — yes,"  he  said,  apparently  quite  as  much  embarrassed 
at  the  moment  as  the  author.  Then  he  smiled  in  his  kindly 
way  and  added :  "The  other  four,  at  least.  .  .  ." 

Jacob  had  seen  his  first  effort  laid  on  the  editorial  table. 


ACHIEVEMENT  357 

"I  hope  to  goodness  he  isn't  going  to  do  it  himself,"  he  said, 
when  he  reported  the  episode  to  Betty. 

"Oh,  why  not?"  she  asked.  "I  expect  he  is.  He's  sure 
to  be  kind  to  you." 

Jacob's  face  expressed  doubt.  "It  makes  me  hot  all  over 
to  think  of  his  reading  it,"  he  said.  "And  as  to  being  kind, 
he  won't  if  he  doesn't  think  the  book  deserves  it.  I  don't 
suppose  there's  another  daily  in  London  as  free  from  fa- 
vouritism or  log-rolling  as  the  D.  P.  Gresswell's  awfully 
down  on  that  sort  of  thing." 

"I'm  perfectly  certain  he'll  like  it,"  Betty  said  confidently, 
and  went  on  to  ask  questions  as  to  "Tristram's"  appearance 
in  book- form.  They  had  not  then  received  their  presenta- 
tion copies,  and  the  paged  proofs,  although  they  had  lent  a 
new  dignity  and  an  air  of  orthodoxy  to  the  story,  had  not 
fulfilled  the  expectation  of  the  completed  book. 

"Amazingly  like  an  ordinary  novel,"  Jacob  said.  "As  a 
matter  of  fact,  I  haven't  had  it  in  my  hand  yet." 

They  were  both  of  them  enormously  excited. 


in 

Thursday  and  Saturday  were  the  days  on  which  the  Daily 
Post  devoted  its  second  page  to  literature ;  and  Jacob,  pro- 
testing that  his  novel  would  most  certainly  not  be  reviewed 
on  the  day  of  publication,  nevertheless  opened  his  paper  on 
Thursday  morning  with  evident  trepidation. 

"No,  it  isn't  in ;  I  didn't  expect  it  would  be,"  he  said,  in 
answer  to  the  question  of  Betty's  eager  face.  "There's  a 
column  and  a  half  of  my  stuff,  though,  which  isn't  so  bad 
for  a  Thursday.  They're  working  off  all  the  old  stuff  I  did 
before  Christmas." 

But  on  Saturday  morning  Betty  went  down  to  the  front- 
door in  her  dressing-gown,  when  she  heard  the  casual 
thump  of  the  newsboy  at  half-past  seven. 

Jacob  sat  up  in  bed  and  listened  for  the  sound  of  her  re- 
turn. She  was,  he  thought,  an  outrageously  long  time  in  the 
hall.  But  when  he  heard  her  begin  to  run  up  the  stairs,  he 


358  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

knew  that  she  had  good  news.  He  jumped  out  of  bed  and 
met  her  on  the  landing. 

"It's  in!"  she  said  breathlessly.  "A  long  notice.  More 
than  half  a  column." 

Jacob  took  the  paper  she  offered  him,  and  began  to  read 
the  review  on  the  landing.  Betty  led  him  into  the  bedroom 
still  reading. 

"Oh,  read  it  aloud !"  she  implored.  "I  hardly  glanced  at 
it  downstairs." 

Jacob  ran  his  eye  quickly  over  the  essentials  of  the  criti- 
cism that  would  be  contained,  as  he  knew,  in  the  concluding 
sentences. 

"It  isn't  bad,"  he  announced. 

"Well,  read  it  to  me,"  she  insisted. 

"Oh,  not  bad !"  she  said,  when  he  had  finished.  "I  think 
it's  splendid !" 

"He  takes  me  tremendously  seriously,"  remarked  Jacob, 
with  an  uneasy  smile.  "All  this  criticism  about  the  relative 
values  I've  given  to  the  characters,  for  instance,  and  the 
mistake  of  making  all  the  others  too  subsidiary  to  Tristram. 
It's  perfectly  sound,  no  doubt,  but  it's  taking  too  high  a 
standard." 

"Well,  that's  a  compliment,  isn't  it?"  asked  Betty. 

"It's  a  compliment  all  right,"  returned  Jacob;  "but  it 
isn't  the  sort  of  thing  that's  going  to  make  people  want  to 
read  the  book.  It  sounds  too  classical  and  artistic,  and  all 
that  sort  of  thing.  If  he  could  have  said  something  about 
the  interest  and  humanity  of  it.  .  .  ." 

"You're  never  satisfied,"  Betty  complained.  "I  should 
have  thought  you  would  have  been  tremendously  pleased. 
It's  a  pretty  good  beginning,  surely — more  than  half  a 
column  of  serious  criticism  in  the  Daily  Post  two  days 
after  publication.  Oh,  I  know  it's  going  to  be  a  huge 
success." 

"I  wonder,"  remarked  Jacob,  and  suddenly  realised  that 
he  was  shivering  with  cold  and  excitement.  "It's  a  bit 
chilly  this  morning,  isn't  it?"  he  said. 

Even  Betty  had  been  too  much  engrossed  to  scold  him  for 


ACHIEVEMENT  359 

standing  about  in  his  pyjamas  on  a  January  morning.  "Get 
back  into  bed,  for  goodness'  sake !"  she  adjured  him. 

"Not  much,"  replied  Jacob.  "I'll  put  on  my  dressing- 
gown,  and  do  the  sitting-room  grate  and  light  the  fire." 

She  found  him  there  a  quarter  of  an  hour  later,  his  house- 
work completed,  and  re-reading  Mr.  Gresswell's  review. 

"He  calls  it  'a  first  novel  of  exceptional  promise/  "  he 
said,  as  she  came  in.  "That  will  make  a  good  quote  for  the 
publishers'  advertisements,  but  it's  the  only  bally  one." 

During  breakfast,  he  hopefully  pointed  out  to  Betty  that, 
although  the  seriously  critical  tone  of  the  editor's  review 
might  not  intrigue  the  interest  of  the  novel-reading  public, 
it  would  be  seen  by  other  reviewers,  and  obtain  for  "John 
Tristram"  more  attention  than  he  might  otherwise  have 
received.  Betty  saw  that  that  was  a  good  point,  and  he 
amplified  it  with  much  tautology. 

She  found  a  delightful  method  of  teasing  him  that  morn- 
ing. "Who's  a  brilliant  novelist?"  she  asked,  and  forced 
him,  in  spite  of  his  perfectly  genuine  reluctance,  to  name 
himself.  "I  don't  suppose  I  shall  get  any  work  out  of  you 
to-day,"  she  said,  when  she  had  wrung  the  shamefaced 
admission  from  him,  notwithstanding  the  many  elaborate 
arguments  that  he  had  adduced  to  prove  to  her  that  this 
first  book  was  a  most  commonplace  performance. 

"You're  quite  wrong  there,  dear,"  he  said  triumphantly. 
"I'm  simply  full  of  ideas  and  energy  now.  It's  when  I'm 
up  against  it  that  I  can't  work." 

And  he  justified  his  statement  by  an  enthusiastic  attack  on 
his  new  book,  as  soon  as  the  breakfast- table  had  been 
cleared. 

She  found  him  apparently  absorbed  when  she  came  into 
their  sitting-room  at  eleven  o'clock. 

"I'm  going  to  take  the  review  round  to  Freda,"  she  an- 
nounced ;  "and  I'm  going  to  send  a  copy  to  Hilda  and  Aunt 
Mary.  Do  you  want  one  sent  to  your  brother?" 

Jacob  considered  the  question  for  a  moment,  and  decided 
against  it.  "He's  sure  to  see  it,"  he  said.  "I'd  sooner  the 
first  advance  came  from  him." 


360  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

When  Betty  had  gone,  he  sat  happily  idle  for  some  min- 
utes, contemplating  the  amazing  fact  that  he  was,  in  a  sense, 
a  success. 

"I'm  bound  to  get  attention  with  this  next  book,"  he 
thought 

IV 

His  anticipations  as  to  the  influence  of  Mr.  Gresswell's 
notice  were  justified  by  the  event.  The  press  did  not  boom 
"John  Tristram,"  but  they  gave  it  reasonable  attention. 
There  were  some  notable  exceptions.  The  Times  and  the 
Daily  Telegraph  overlooked  him  altogether,  but  the  ma- 
jority of  the  London  dailies  treated  him  with  a  slightly 
doubting  respect,  implying  that  he  had  done  rather  well  as 
far  as  they  could  judge,  but  that  they  would  prefer  to  wait 
for  further  samples  before  definitely  committing  themselves. 

The  Morning  Post  critic  displayed  a  greater  confidence  in 
his  own  opinion  than  any  other  writer,  and  the  arrival  of 
the  press-cutting,  a  fortnight  after  the  book's  publication, 
was  one  of  the  "events"  that  marked  this  period. 

Jacob  read  the  notice  aloud  to  Betty,  and  afterwards  re- 
read the  more  glowing  passages,  such  as  "Mr.  Stahl  has 
written  a  very  remarkable  book.  If,  as  it  seems,  it  is  his 
first,  'J°hri  Tristram'  should  place  its  writer  at  once  in  the 
forefront  of  modern  novelists";  and  the  conclusion,  in 
which  the  reviewer  congratulated  him  "on  one  of  the  most 
convincing  studies  of  character  we  have  read  for  a  very 
long  time." 

"No  hesitation  about  that,"  Jacob  commented,  flushed 
with  quiet  pride. 

"He  hasn't  said  a  word  too  much,"  Betty  assured  him ; 
and  then  they  read  the  notice  all  through  again,  in  order  to 
get  the  feeling  of  the  general  tone  of  it. 

"He's  really  enthusiastic,  isn't  he?"  Jacob  asked  glee- 
fully. 

Betty  jumped  out  of  her  chair  and  kissed  him.  "Now, 
who's  a  brilliant  novelist?"  she  asked,  and  would  not  be  put 
off  by  any  of  his  attempted  evasions. 


ACHIEVEMENT  361 

And  it  was  the  Morning  Post  review  that  produced  the 
expected  communication  from  Jacob's  brother,  Eric. 

Jacob  found  the  letter  in  the  passage  when  he  returned 
from  the  Daily  Post  office  on  Monday  evening.  Betty  had 
gone  to  tea  with  Freda,  and  he  guessed  that  she  had  not  yet 
returned.  She  would  certainly  have  taken  the  letter  upstairs 
if  she  had  come  in.  For  one  moment  his  jealousy  of  Freda 
flared  up  again.  He  was  hurt  that  Betty  should  not  have 
been  at  home  to  welcome  him. 

He  found  a  carefully  banked-up  fire  in  their  sitting-room, 
stirred  it  into  a  blaze,  and  sat  down  to  read  his  letter.  It 
was  not  long. 

"MY  DEAR  JAMES, 

"I  saw  an  excellent  review  of  your  novel,  'John  Tristram,'  in  the 
Morning  Post  on  Thursday,  and  congratulate  you  on  what  seems 
to  be  an  undoubted  achievement.  I  have  not  read  the  book  yet,  but 
I  shall  certainly  do  so  next  week.  Why  have  you  never  come  to  see 
us?  It  must  be  more  than  two  years  now  since  we  last  heard  from 
you,  and  I  am  addressing  this  to  the  care  of  your  publishers,  as  I 
have  not  the  least  notion  where  you  are  living.  We,  as  you  see, 
are  still  in  the  same  house,  and  would  be  delighted  if  you  would 
come  to  supper  any  Sunday. 

"Your  affectionate  brother, 

"Ewe" 

"P.S. — Doris  begs  me  to  add  that  she  hopes  we  shall  see  you  next 
Sunday,  if  you  are  in  town." 

"Not  only  still  in  the  same  house,"  reflected  Jacob,  "but 
also  in  precisely  the  same  mood."  In  two  years  his  brother 
had  not  changed  in  the  least  degree,  if  his  letter  was  any 
criterion.  It  might  have  been  written  two  or  ten  years 
before,  and  in  those  two  years  Jacob  had  had  experiences 
that  had  revolutionised  his  whole  attitude  towards  life.  "I 
am  not  the  same  man,"  he  thought,  "that  I  was  in  those 
days."  Yet  he  was  conscious  at  that  moment  of  all  the  old 
hesitations  and  doubts.  He  would  never  be  able  to  boast, 
nor  even  to  defend  his  own  opinions,  in  his  brother's  house 
at  Putney.  That  old  form  of  address — no  one  but  Eric  had 
ever  called  him  "James" — seemed  to  have  some  hypnotic 
suggestion.  The  sight  of  his  brother  and  the  sense  of  the 


362  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

familiar  atmosphere  of  his  surroundings  would  be  still  more 
potent.  Jacob  could  picture  every  detail  of  his  visit,  and, 
just  as  on  an  earlier  occasion,  he  would  have  to  tell  what 
must  appear  in  those  surroundings  as  a  disreputable  story. 
He  had  almost  decided  that  nothing  should  induce  him  to  go 
to  Putney  when  he  heard  the  front-door  slam,  and  then 
Betty's  footstep  on  the  stairs. 

She  came  in,  a  little  flushed,  as  if  she  had  been  hurrying. 

"Oh,  you  are  in  first,  after  all!"  she  said.    "Any  news?" 

Jacob  had  quite  forgotten  his  resentment.  "The  long- 
expected  letter  from  Eric,"  he  said,  and  gave  it  to  her  to 
read. 

"What  a  wonderful  handwriting!"  was  her  first  exclama- 
tion. "It's  so  extraordinarily  neat,  and  small,  and  clear." 

Jacob  wondered  vaguely  whether  the  same  adjectives 
were  in  any  way  descriptive  of  Eric's  soul,  but  he  said  noth- 
ing till  Betty  had  finished. 

"Are  you  going?"  she  asked,  looking  at  him  with  an  ex- 
pression he  could  not  interpret.  He  thought  it  a  little  cold 
— defensive,  perhaps. 

"Oh  no!  What's  the  good?"  he  said.  "As  a  matter  of 
fact  I've  been,  in  imagination.  I  know  so  absolutely  every- 
thing they  would  say." 

"I  think  you'd  better  go,"  replied  Betty. 

"What  good  would  it  do  ?"  he  said ;  but  he  was  suddenly 
aware  that  he  wanted  to  go.  That  visit  would  be  an  adven- 
ture, an  excitement.  It  would  give  him  an  opportunity  to 
make  one  more  effort  to  express  himself  to  his  brother. 
Jacob  felt  that  in  some  inexplicable  way  he  might  make 
himself  understood,  if  he  were  only  bold  enough. 

"Well,  he  is  your  brother,"  Betty  said.  "And  evidently 
his  wife  would  like  to  see  you." 

"I  don't  really  care  one  way  or  the  other,"  remarked 
Jacob  carelessly. 

"You  would  tell  them  about  us,  of  course?"  Betty  con- 
tinued. 

"Obviously.  I'm  not  the  least  ashamed  of  our  relations," 
Jacob  returned  valiantly. 


ACHIEVEMENT 

"But  you  wouldn't  take  me  with  you  ?" 

"Rather!  I  would,  if  you'd  like  to  come.  It  would  be 
no  end  of  a  lark." 

"And  suppose  they  snubbed  me?" 

"Make  a  few  pertinent  remarks  and  walk  out,"  Jacob 
suggested. 

Betty  smiled.  "I  wouldn't  go  for  anything  in  the  world," 
she  announced. 

Jacob  was  puzzled.  "Would  you  sooner  /  didn't  go, 
either  ?"  he  asked. 

"I  want  you  to  go,  but  I  don't  think  you'd  better  say 
anything  about  me,"  was  her  answer. 

"I  couldn't  go  and  not  mention  you,"  he  said  firmly. 

"What  good  can  it  do  ?"  she  said.  "Why  not  go  and  talk 
about  your  book  and  leave  me  out  of  it?" 

He  frowned  and  took  up  his  old  question:  "Are  you 
worrying  again?" 

"Not  a  bit,"  she  said  gaily.  "I  was  talking  to  Freda 
about  that  this  afternoon.  That  was  what  made  me  late. 
I  only  want  to  be  consistent  about  it.  You  see,  dear,  there 
are  evidently  two  sorts  of  people  from  our  point  of  view — 
the  ones  who  won't  care  about  our  not  being  married,  and 
the  ones  who  will.  I  don't  know  which  sort  your  brother 
belongs  to,  but  I  can  guess ;  and  it  isn't  any  good  trying  to 
persuade  that  sort  that  we  are  just  as  virtuous  as  they  are, 
because  you  couldn't  ever  make  them  believe  it.  So  what 
we've  got  to  do  is  to  know  only  the  other  sort." 

"There  are  plenty  of  the  other  sort  about,"  replied  Jacob, 
"and  we're  pretty  sure  to  meet  them  when  I'm  a  bit  better 
known ;  but  does  all  this  mean  that  you'd  sooner  I  didn't  go 
to  Putney?" 

"No;  I  want  you  to  go,"  Betty  said.  "But  I  do  think 
that  you'd  better  leave  me  out  of  it." 

"I  couldn't  do  that,"  Jacob  repeated. 

They  decided  finally  that  he  was  to  accept  Eric's  invita- 
tion for  the  next  Sunday,  not  mentioning  Betty  in  his  letter, 
but  leaving  himself  free  to  make  any  announcement  he 
thought  fit  when  the  time  came. 


364  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

Reflecting  on  the  conversation  later,  Jacob  was  struck  by 
the  change  that  had  come  over  Betty  in  the  last  fifteen 
months.  She  held  her  head  higher  now  than  he  held  his 
own.  Was  that  change  mainly  due  to  Freda's  influence,  he 
wondered  ? 


As  he  walked  up  from  Putney  Station  to  his  brother's 
house  on  Sunday  evening,  Jacob  was  fully  prepared  to  adopt 
a  confident,  high-handed  attitude  throughout  the  coming 
interview.  He  had  a  clear  way  of  escape.  If  he  returned 
to  Betty  that  night  with  the  admission  that  he  had  not  men- 
tioned her  name,  she  could  not  blame  him.  She  had  stead- 
fastly advised  silence,  and  defended  her  advice  on  the 
grounds  that  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Eric  Stahl  fell  into  the  category 
of  the  "other  sort."  Jacob  believed  that  also,  but  he  did  not 
believe  that  he  would  be  well  advised  to  leave  Putney  with 
the  one  important  fact  of  his  relations  with  Betty  unre- 
ported.  His  silence  might  be  diplomatic,  but  it  would  con- 
stitute an  admission  that  he  was  ashamed,  with  the  further 
implication  that  many  of  his  old  arguments  were  fallacious. 
Nevertheless,  he  had  left  himself  a  way  of  escape  for  two 
reasons.  The  first  was  that  he  wanted  to  surprise  Betty. 
He  had  left  her  without  declaring  his  intention.  He  liked 
to  think  that  she  was  at  that  moment  anticipating  his  failure 
to  confess  their  relations,  and  he  pictured  with  a  .keen 
pleasure  his  return  with  the  quiet  boast  that  he  had  always 
meant  to  be  perfectly  honest  and  brave  about  it  all.  He 
would  justify  himself,  and  give  her  fresh  cause  for  confi- 
dence. His  second  reason  was  equally  characteristic.  He 
felt  relieved  by  the  knowledge  that  he  was  not  pledged. 
That  knowledge  gave  him  strength.  He  hated  to  be  in  any 
sense  driven.  Now  he  was  free  to  do  as  he  chose. 

And  in  the  train  he  argued  himself  into  a  pose  of  smiling 
superiority  to  any  strictures  or  cold  disapproval  that  he 
might,  and  as  he  thought  probably  would,  meet.  He  was 
self-sufficient.  He  was  in  no  way  dependent  upon  his 
brother's  good-will.  He  had,  with  Betty's  assistance,  made 


ACHIEVEMENT  365 

some  sort  of  a  place  for  himself  in  the  world.  He  was  a 
regular  and  esteemed  contributor  to  one  of  the  most  literary 
dailies  in  London.  He  had  written  a  book  that  placed  him, 
according  to  the  Morning  Post's  reviewer,  "in  the  forefront 
of  modern  novelists."  Finally,  in  this  connection,  he  had 
nearly  finished  a  second  book  that  in  his  own  opinion  was 
far  better  than  the  first.  He  must,  he  reflected,  keep  the 
thought  of  his  own  glory  constantly  in  his  mind.  He  must 
walk  into  his  brother's  house  with  the  consciousness  and  the 
air  of  the  brilliant  young  novelist  who  was  one  day  going  to 
do  great  things.  .  .  . 

As  he  walked  up  from  the  station  he  was  fully  persuaded 
that  he  was  a  person  of  considerable  consequence. 

It  was  the  sight  of  that  familiar  place  that  gave  him  the 
first  feeling  of  uneasiness.  Eric's  house  stood  slightly  apart 
from  its  neighbours,  its  grounds  were  larger,  and  both  house 
and  garden  were  neater  and  in  some  way  more  definite  than 
those  near  them.  Here  were  the  marks  of  efficiency  and 
permanence.  Jacob  halted  with  his  hand  on  the  latch  of  the 
garden-gate  and  wondered  if  George  Eliot  could  have  de- 
fended her  position  in  those  surroundings? 

And  then  he  had  to  wait  alone  for  five  minutes  in  the 
drawing-room.  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Stahl  were  out,  the  maid  said, 
but  would  certainly  be  back  in  a  few  minutes.  They  had 
gone  to  Hampstead — a  long  journey  from  Putney  in  1899. 

Jacob  fidgeted,  and  his  courage  sank  continually  lower  as 
he  sat  in  his  brother's  drawing-room.  There,  too,  he  found 
the  characteristic  marks.  The  furniture  was  neither  Vic- 
torian nor  influenced  by  the  craze  for  the  antique.  Beauti- 
fully kept  mahogany  and  walnut,  silver  and  brass,  pro- 
claimed a  note  of  stability  without  pretentiousness,  and  the 
many  books  which  had  overflowed  from  the  library  were  so 
undeniably  well  chosen.  The  best  literature  was  repre- 
sented, and  yet  the  choice  was  not  from  the  more  obvious 
classics.  Stendhal,  Sainte-Beuve,  Flaubert,  and  Bourget 
were  there  in  the  originals,  together  with  French  transla- 
tions from  Pushkin,  Gorky,  and  Turgenev.  Germany  sup- 
plied no  lighter  literature  except  Heine's  verse,  but  there 


366  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

was  a  German  translation  of  a  Swedish  writer  named  Au- 
gust Strindberg,  almost  unknown  in  England  at  that 
time.  .  .  . 

Jacob  ranged  moodily  along  the  shelves,  growing  con- 
tinually more  conscious  of  his  ignorance  and  the  futility  of 
his  attempt  at  fiction.  This  was  the  standard  by  which  he 
would  be  judged.  Eric  and  his  wife  had  read  these  books, 
and  knew  them  well  enough  to  compare  and  criticise  the 
writers  of  them.  The  whole  atmosphere  of  the  place  was 
impregnable.  Scholarship  and  efficiency  made  up  the  domi- 
nant note  of  the  house.  And  even  in  the  most  conventional 
details  the  owners  of  it  maintained  their  standard.  No 
doubt  that  Hampstead  visit  had  been  a  duty  call,  the  kind  of 
visit  that  Jacob,  in  Eric's  position,  would  have  shirked  and 
neglected. 

He  was  roused  from  his  reflections  by  the  sound  of  the 
garden-gate.  They  were  coming,  and  Jacob  knew  that  he 
was  a  hopeless  failure,  and  not  at  all  respectable. 


VI 

Doris  came  in  at  once.  "Oh,  you  are  here!"  she  said. 
"I'm  sorry  we  were  out.  We  have  been  over  to  Professor 
Henderson's  at  Hampstead,  and  it  is  such  a  journey."  She 
appeared  to  be  slightly  embarrassed. 

"I've  only  been  here  a  few  minutes,"  Jacob  said.  "I've 
been  looking  at  the  books."  He  was  ready  to  plunge  head- 
long into  that  subject  when  his  brother  entered. 

Eric  Stahl  was  slightly  shorter  than  Jacob,  and  had  a 
scholarly  stoop  of  the  shoulders  that  made  him  look  shorter 
still.  He  had  dark  eyes,  a  neat,  dark  moustache,  and  some- 
what blunt  features,  that  contrasted  markedly  with  Jacob's 
blue-eyed,  clean-shaven,  rather  ascetic  face,  and  yet  some 
effect  of  general  proportion  or  trick  of  expression  empha- 
sised a  recognisable  likeness  between  them.  No  one  could 
doubt  that  they  were  brothers. 

"I'm  sorry  we're  late,"  Eric  said,  as  he  shook  hands  with 


ACHIEVEMENT  367 

his  brother.  "We've  been  over  to  Henderson's  at  Hamp- 
stead.  It's  a  tremendous  undertaking." 

"I've  only  been  here  a  minute  or  two,"  Jacob  said;  and 
then  Doris  got  up  with  a  smile  and  murmured  that  she  must 
go  and  take  off  her  things. 

Jacob  wondered  how  many  more  times  it  would  be  neces- 
sary to  begin  a  conversation.  Presently  Doris  would  return, 
and  after  that  they  would  go  in  to  supper.  Each  interrup- 
tion necessitated  a  fresh  opening.  At  that  moment  he  could 
imagine  nothing  more  grotesquely  impossible  than  that  he 
should  disclose  the  sacred  story  of  his  life  with  Betty  to 
these  two  efficient,  intimidating  strangers. 

A  constraint  that  evidently  affected  Eric  no  less  than 
Jacob  induced  a  reference  to  the  weather  as  soon  as  the  two 
brothers  were  left  alone,  and  it  was  Jacob  who  made  the 
first  effort  to  open  a  safe  topic.  He  was  afraid  of  being  led 
into  any  relation  of  his  own  story  until  he  had  the  attention 
of  both  hearers.  If  the  thing  was  to  be  done,  he  must  make 
an  occasion  for  it.  To  dribble  out  fragments  and  then  re- 
peat them  would  hopelessly  compromise  his  chance  of  pro- 
ducing any  air  of  conviction,  and  when  the  dreaded  silence 
came,  he  seized  the  moment  for  an  attack. 

"I've  been  looking  you  up  in  Whitaker,"  he  said.  "You 
seem  to  be  doing  very  well." 

Eric  was  standing  on  the  hearthrug,  his  well-cut  frock- 
coat  unbuttoned,  and  he  now  pushed  back  the  tails  of  it,  put 
his  hands  in  his  trouser-pockets,  and  looked  down  modestly 
at  his  patent-leather  boots. 

"I  have  been  rather  lucky,"  he  admitted. 

"What's  the  next  thing?"  asked  Jacob.  "A  permanent 
secretaryship,  and  twelve  hundred  pounds  a  year?" 

"Not  for  a  few  years  yet,"  replied  Eric,  with  a  depreca- 
tory smile. 

"But  I  suppose  you're  getting  nearly  that  now?"  per- 
sisted Jacob. 

"Nine  hundred,"  Eric  said.    "I  had  a  big  rise  last  year." 

Jacob  remembered  that  Doris  had  money  of  her  own. 
These  two  relations  of  his  were  well  established,  and  yet,  for 


368  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

the  first  time  in  his  life,  he  had  a  strange  sense  of  deferring 
to  them.  So  long  as  he  could  keep  on  this  subject  he  was 
safe.  He  did  not  envy  them  money,  nor  a  position,  however 
influential,  in  the  Civil  Service.  Only  their  scholarship 
intimidated  him. 

"I  never  have  quite  understood  what  was  the  work  of  you 
permanent  officials,"  he  said,  and  pressed  his  inquiries  until 
Doris  returned.  He  had  found  an  attitude.  He  was  the 
artist,  decently  ignorant  of  the  minutiae  of  administrative 
government. 

And  not  until  supper  was  completely  started  was  any 
mention  made  of  Jacob's  book. 

Doris  began.  "We've  both  read  'John  Tristram/  "  she 
said.  "We  like  it  immensely." 

"Only  a  beginning/"'  mumbled  Jacob. 

"Yes,  we  felt  that,  in  a  way,"  Doris  said.  "But  it's  quite 
a  splendid  beginning." 

"I  don't  want  you  to  take  it  too  seriously,"  replied  Jacob, 
modestly  preoccupied  with  his  cold  chicken. 

"We  thought  you  had  been  rather  influenced  by  Thack- 
eray," put  in  Eric. 

"More  particularly  'Vanity  Fair'  and  'The  Newcomes,' " 
added  Doris. 

And  Eric  smartened  up  the  criticism  by  concluding :  "But 
you're  undoubtedly  developing  a  characteristic  style  of  your 
own.  One  could  see  it  getting  stronger  as  the  book  went 
on." 

Jacob  had  a  quiver  of  terrible  doubt. 

"I'm  afraid  the  next  book  .  .  ."  he  began,  lost  his  se- 
quence by  a  parenthesis  to  the  effect  that  the  second  book 
was  nearly  finished  and  would  possibly  be  published  in  the 
autumn,  and  then  recovered  his  point  clumsily  by  adding: 
"But  what  I  was  going  to  say  is  that  I'm  afraid  the  style  of ' 
it  is  entirely  different  to  anything  in  'Tristram.'  I — it's  a 
style  that  really  suits  me  better — slightly  whimsical,  fan- 
tastic, you  know." 

"Isn't  it  supposed  to  be  rather  a  mistake  to  change  your 
style?"  asked  Eric. 


ACHIEVEMENT  869 

"I  dare  say  it  is,"  apologised  Jacob. 

Eric  smiled  rather  grimly.  "You've  always  erred,  I  think, 
on  the  side  of  versatility,"  he  said. 

Jacob  realised  that  everything  was  going  badly.  They  had 
got  him  down  already.  At  the  opening  he  had  held  a  tenable 
position,  but  now  he  was  exposed  to  a  criticism  that  was 
penetrating  his  literary  defences  and  touching  his  private 
life.  If  he  admitted  versatility,  his  anticipated  confession 
was  damned.  Only  a  bold  counter-attack  could  save  him. 

He  looked  up  and  met  his  brother's  eyes.  "I  don't  like 
your  description,"  he  said.  "Versatility  has  somehow  come 
to  mean  weakness.  You've  kept  one  line  so  well  yourself, 
you  know,  Eric,  that  you've  no  sympathy  for  the  empirical 
method,  which  is,  after  all,  the  scientific  method,  isn't  it?" 

He  kept  his  head  up,  but  he  felt  as  if  he  had  boxed  his 
brother's  ears. 

Eric  showed  no  sign  of  being  offended. 

"How  far  can  you  carry  empiricism  in  practical  life?"  he 
returned.  "One  must  start  from  certain  premisses." 

Jacob's  mind  was  whirling  with  arguments,  none  of  them 
sufficiently  conclusive.  "I  must  stand  up  to  him,"  he  said  to 
himself,  "even  if  I  get  rude." 

"In  the  Civil  Service,  no  doubt,"  he  said.  "I'll  admit 
that  at  once.  But  you  know  perfectly  well  that  all  your 
premisses  are  open  to  question.  You  merely  accept  them 
from  motives  of  expediency." 

Eric  laughed,  and  looked  across  at  his  wife. 

"We  were  discussing  that  point  a  few  days  ago,"  she  ex- 
plained, "and  almost  decided  that  a  certain  d  priorism  was 
absolutely  essential." 

"In  practical  life,  and  science  and  art,  as  well  as  in  re- 
ligion," added  Eric. 

"Setting  up  a  dummy  for  someone  else  to  knock  down  ?" 
suggested  Jacob. 

"Is  it  quite  that?"  asked  Doris.     "Eric,  will  you  ring?" 

The  entrance  of  the  maid  interrupted  the  argument,  but 
Jacob  was  satisfied  with  the  part  he  had  played  in  it.  He 
had  not  been  crushed,  although  he  had  been  dependent  on 


370  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

his  own  wit,  while  his  opponents  had  all  the  advantages  of 
academic  resource.  The  change  of  courses  had  saved  him 
for  the  time  being;  in  another  minute  he  would  have  been 
bewildered  and  beaten  by  the  citation  of  authorities  and  of 
the  precedents  of  history.  He  congratulated  himself  that 
he  had  recovered  some  of  his  lost  ground,  and  determined  to 
remain  with  the  initiative.  Doris  was  handicapped  by  apple- 
tart  and  trifle. 

Jacob  accepted  trifle  as  more  easily  negotiable  for  himself, 
and  took  up  his  own  line  with  determination. 

"You  know,  I  can't  argue  with  you,"  he  said.  "You're 
both  of  you  too  well  read.  You  have  me  at  once  when  it 
comes  to  authorities.  But  I  am  working  towards  some  sort 
of  a  philosophy  of  my  own.  I  don't  want  you  to  run  away 
with  the  idea  that  I  change  my  mind  every  ten  minutes." 

Doris  politely  deprecated  such  an  idea,  but  Eric  came 
in  with  a  definite  question : 

"What  are  you  living  on  now?"  he  asked. 

"Reviewing  for  the  Daily  Post  chiefly,"  replied  Jacob. 
"I'm  on  the  staff  for  all  intents  and  purposes.  I  go  through 
the  books  with  the  editor  once  a  week,  and  get  a  pile  to 
select  from." 

He  thought  they  were  mildly  impressed,  and  modestly 
gave  them  some  account  of  his  work  to  keep  the  conversa- 
tion on  safe  ground  until  they  went  back  to  the  drawing- 
room.  Nevertheless,  his  heart  was  failing  him.  These  little 
boasts  were  all  very  well,  but  they  were  quite  insufficient  as 
a  prelude  to  the  principal  movement  that  must  soon  be  indi- 
cated. 

\  "Will  you  come  into  the  other  room?  You  can  smoke 
there,"  Eric  said,  as  Doris  got  up  from  the  table. 

VII 

No  opportunity  was  presented  to  him.  The  conversation 
had  slid  to  impersonal  topics.  Eric  had  been  reading  a  new 
French  philosopher  named  Bergson,  who  ought  to  be  trans- 
lated ;  he  had  written  a  very  remarkable  essay  on  the  imme- 


ACHIEVEMENT  371 

diate  data  of  consciousness  some  ten  years  before,  Eric  said, 
and  had  followed  it  up  more  recently  with  a  work  entitled, 
"Matiere  et  Memoire."  Jacob  was  advised  to  read  him. 

They  were  not  going  to  make  any  further  inquiries  about 
his  manner  of  life.  Jacob  was  accepted.  He  had  been  diffi- 
cult in  his  younger  days,  but  he  had  done  something  to 
justify  his  claim  to  recognition,  and  could  now  be  received 
within  the  learned  circle  of  their  acquaintance.  They  even 
talked  to  him  as  if  he  were  their  intellectual  equal. 

The  disclosure  of  his  irregularities  became  more  difficult 
every  minute,  and  it  was  half-past  nine.  He  must  leave  by 
ten  o'clock  at  the  latest.  His  attention  had  wandered  from 
the  amazing  analyses  of  M.  Bergson.  What  was  Doris 
saying  ? 

"I'm  sorry  I  didn't  hear,"  Jacob  apologised. 

"I  said  you  must  meet  some  of  our  literary  friends  here," 
Doris  repeated.  "We  know  quite  a  lot  of  people  who  might 
be  useful  to  you." 

"Thanks — yes,  I  should  like  to  very  much,"  Jacob  said. 
For  a  moment  he  did  not  realise  his  opportunity,  and  then 
he  braced  himself  for  the  big  effort.  "Only  I  ought  to  tell 
you,"  he  went  on,  "that  some  people  might  perhaps  object 
to  meeting  me.  There  is  such  a  lot  of  prejudice  among — 
among  some  people."  How  much  better  it  would  have  been 
if  he  had  said  all  this  earlier.  Coming  now,  it  had  the  air  of 
a  shamefaced  reservation.  And  do  what  he  would,  he  could 
not  help  blushing. 

He  kept  his  eyes  on  Doris ;  he  could  not  look  at  Eric. 

"Oh!    Why?"  she  asked.  '"Why  should  anyone  object?" 

He  hesitated  until  the  silence  became  unendurable. 
Neither  of  them  gave  him  any  further  encouragement. 
Without  question,  he  was  condemned  again  already — thrust 
back  into  the  ghetto  of  the  social  pariahs.  He  had  bungled 
hopelessly,  and  now  he  might  as  well  give  up  any  hope  of 
placating  these  two  respectable,  capable  people.  He  real- 
ised for  the  first  time  that  he  had  had  some  wild,  foolish 
dream  of  returning  to  Betty  with  the  news  that  she  was  to 


372  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

be  received  at  Putney.  How  incredibly  foolish  he  could  be 
in  the  affairs  of  life! 

"You  two  people  always  paralyse  me,"  he  burst  out  des- 
perately, at  last. 

"I  don't  know  why  we  should,"  Eric  said  slowly.  He  had 
not  smoked  since  supper,  but  now  he  took  a  cigarette  from 
the  box  on  the  table. 

"I  don't  think  you  have  ever  been  quite  fair  to  us,"  said 
Doris.  She  leaned  a  little  forward  and  shaded  her  eyes 
from  the  fire.  "Two  years  ago  last  November,"  she  con- 
tinued, "before  baby  died,  I  thought  we  were  beginning  to 
understand  each  other."  Her  voice  was  quite  steady,  but 
her  tone  was  gentle,  even  tender. 

"You  judge  us  much  more  harshly  than  we  have  ever 
judged  you,"  Eric  put  in. 

"I'm  sorry,"  murmured  Jacob.  "I  dare  say  it  has  all 
been  my  fault."  Were  they  human,  after  all,  he  wondered  ? 
The  suggestion  seemed  too  improbable.  He  must  wait  until 
his  story  was  told  before  he  decided  that  problem.  But 
the  telling  of  it  was  become  unexpectedly  simple.  It  was 
no  more  an  admission  of  improbity,  but  a  test  of  their 
quality. 

"You  see,  I  have  always  been  a  poorish  sort  of  fool,"  he 
said.  "I  never  did  anything  decently,  and  my  marriage 
made  things  fifty  times  worse." 

Doris  murmured  something  that  he  did  not  catch,  but  he 
went  on:  "And  anything  I  have  done  now  has  been  due 
to  someone  else's  influence  more  than  my  own  determina- 
tion. She  has  given  me  everything  I  wanted — help  and 
encouragement,  and — and  .  .  .  love.  I  was  such  a  deso- 
late sort  of  creature  before." 

"Who  is  she?"  asked  Eric  quietly. 

"Her  father  is  the  rector  of  a  parish  in  Buckingham- 
shire," replied  Jacob,  stiffening  a  little.  "Some  of  her 
people  have  forgiven  her  and  come  to  see  us,  but  not  her 
father.  And,  of  course,  she  has  been  very  miserable  in 
some  ways.  She  is  getting  over  it  now;  but  we  lived  in 
Cornwall  for  six  months,  and  never  met  a  soul." 


ACHIEVEMENT  373 

"Wouldn't  your  wife  divorce  you  ?"  suggested  Eric. 

Jacob  shook  his  head.  "She  won't — on  religious 
grounds,"  he  added,  with  a  faint  sneer. 

"What  is  her  name?"  asked  Doris. 

"Betty,"  replied  Jacob.    "Her  father's  name  is  Gale." 

Eric  lighted  a  fresh  cigarette.  "I  admit  that  it  does  make 
it  difficult  to  meet  some  people,"  he  said.  "A  friend  of 
Doris's  has  just  gone  through  the  divorce  court.  She  left 
her  husband  for  much  the  same  sort  of  reason  that  you 
left  your  wife," 

"But  you  don't  condemn  her  utterly  ?"  asked  Jacob,  turn- 
ing to  Doris. 

She  looked  up  at  him  and  smiled.  "I  don't  think  you 
understand  us  in  the  least,"  she  said.  "We  are  not  as  preju- 
diced as  you  think  we  are,  but  we  have  to  know  so  many 
people  who  are — well,  particular  about  that  sort  of  thing." 

"Oh,  of  course,"  agreed  Jacob. 

"I'm  glad  you  told  us,"  remarked  Eric,  and  then  came 
another  silence.  Jacob  was  still  unsure  whether  they  were 
human  or  not.  They  had  done  the  right  thing,  but  they  had 
left  themselves  unburdened  by  any  responsibility  to  uphold 
the  rectitude  of  Jacob's  and  Betty's  attitude. 

Jacob  sighed.  "I'm  afraid  I  must  be  going,"  he  said. 
"It's  a  long  way  to  Great  Ormond  Street." 

Doris  looked  at  her  husband. 

"You  don't  think  it  would  be  possible  to  get  a  divorce?" 
he  asked. 

Jacob  stood  up.  "No,"  he  said  definitely.  "And  I  don't 
know  that  Betty  and  I  are  very  keen  on  it  either." 

"That's  all  right,  no  doubt,  as  a  matter  of  principle," 
replied  Eric.  "Doris  and  I  are  quite  prepared  to  agree  with 
you,  but  you  must  see  how  difficult  the  social  question  is." 

"I  do,"  admitted  Jacob.  "I'm  only  sorry  now  that  we 
shan't  be  able  to  meet." 

"But  there's  no  reason  why  we  shouldn't,"  Doris  said 
eagerly.  "It's  only  that  we  can't  ask  you  to  meet  certain 
other  people." 


374  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

Jacob  flushed.  "We  don't  want  to  meet  people  much,  you 
know,"  he  said  gently. 

"Will  you  come  and  have  dinner  with  us  quietly  one 
night?"  suggested  Eric. 

VIII 

Jacob's  reaction  was  complete  by  the  time  he  reached 
home. 

"I'm  the  rottenest  judge  of  people  that  ever  lived!"  he 
told  Betty.  "Eric  is  perfectly  human;  I'm  not  sure  that 
he's  not  more  human  than  I  am,  in  a  way.  I  can  see  now, 
and  I  never  guessed  it  till  to-night,  that  he  has  always 
wanted  to  help  me,  only  I  wouldn't  let  him.  I  got  on  his 
nerves.  I  should  have  got  on  anybody's  nerves  two  years 
ago.  I  was  confoundedly  pigheaded  and  unpractical.  And 
as  for  Doris,  she's  a  dear,  Betty.  I  know  you'll  like  Doris. 
Only  you  mustn't  let  them  terrify  you.  They  are  so  paralys- 
ingly  clever;  they  read  all  the  books  before  anyone  else  has 
heard  of  them.  And  they  understand  what  they  read. 
When  I  thought  of  my  reviewing  to-night  I  felt  that  I 
wanted  to  crawl  underground.  The  cheek  of  my  pretending 
to  review  books !" 

"And  they  really  don't  mind?"  asked  Betty. 

"Not  one  scrap  themselves,  but  they  know  so  many  peo- 
ple who  would.  I  suppose  they  have  to." 

"You  think  they  want  us  to  go?" 

"I'm  absolutely  certain  they  do,"  Jacob  said.  He  paused 
a  moment,  and  concluded:  "It  sounds  incredible,  but  I 
believe  they're  rather  fond  of  me  in  their  own  way." 


XVIII 
RECOGNITION 


BETTY  was  received  and  approved  by  Eric  and  his  wife 
the  same  week.  Doris  found  an  occasion  to  whisper  to 
Jacob  that  Betty  was  "perfectly  sweet,"  a  phrase  that  sur- 
prised him  by  its  femininity,  but  pleased  him  far  more  than 
any  expression  of  deliberate  approval,  such  as  Eric's  "I 
should  think  she  is  the  kind  of  woman  who  would  certainly 
help  you."  But  if  Eric  was  still  inclined  to  formality,  he 
was  helpful  in  another  way.  Doris's  statement  that  she  and 
her  husband  knew  people  who  might  be  useful  to  Jacob, 
was  soon  verified.  Eric  had  met  no  less  a  person  than 
A.  B.  Ellis  at  a  Fabian  meeting,  and  had  had  the  temerity 
to  recommend  his  brother's  novel. 

Jacob  was  torn  between  apprehension  and  pride  when  he 
heard  that  announcement.  Ellis  was  a  comparatively  new 
writer,  but  his  power  had  been  recognised  from  the  publica- 
tion of  his  first  book. 

"That  was  awfully  good  of  you,"  Jacob  said.  "I'm  afraid 
he  won't  like  it,  though.  I  admire  his  work  tremendously 
— the  clearness  and  vividness  of  it,  you  know.  I  think, 
in  a  way,  my  next  book  has  been  rather  influenced  by  Ellis's 
style.  I  wish  it  had  been  that.  Do  you  think  he'll  read 
Tristram'?" 

"Most  probably,"  Eric  said.  "I  have  seen  him  several 
times  lately,  and  he  has  been  good  enough  to  ask  my  advice 
on  one  or  two  occasions.  And,  by  the  way,  he  has  had  the 
same  matrimonial  difficulties  as  yourselves."  He  included 
Betty  in  his  rather  formal  smile.  "I'm  not  quite  sure 
whether  his  wife  has  divorced  him  or  not." 

Jacob  could  talk  of  nothing  but  the  chance  of  meeting 

375 


376  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

A.  B.  Ellis  during  the  next  two  days,  and  did  not  forget  to 
point  out  that  little  matrimonial  irregularities  were  of  small 
account  in  the  literary  world,  if  once  you  became  famous. 

Betty  smiled  and  agreed.  She  had  already  come  to  the 
same  conclusion  by  another  road.  The  truth  was  that  they 
had  found  a  formula,  which  even  Beechcombe  might  come 
to  accept  in  due  time.  Two  months  before  Jacob  Stahl 
could  not  be  explained.  The  questions,  "Who  is  he?" 
"What  is  he?"  could  only  be  answered  by  devious  and  un- 
satisfactory explanations.  Now  he  was  the  author  of  "a 
very  promising  first  novel,"  a  young  writer  who  was  going 
to  be  well  known.  He  was  an  explicable  person,  and  Beech- 
combe  could  only  refuse  to  accept  the  explanation  on  the 
grounds  of  ignorance  or  of  disapproval  of  Jacob's  work. 
Nevertheless,  Betty  had  no  intention  of  approaching  her 
father  as  yet.  She  felt  that  the  first  advances  must  come 
from  him.  They  could  wait. 

But  she  sent  a  copy  of  "Tristram"  to  Hilda  a  week  after 
her  little  girl  was  born,  and  had  an  answer  a  few  days  later 
in  which  Hilda  held  out  hopes  that  she  might  possibly  be 
able  to  come  to  town  with  her  husband  in  April  to  stay  with 
his  married  sister,  and  concluded:  "We  should  so  like  to 
come  and  see  you  both,  and  bring  baby!" 

"They  are  all  coming  round,"  was  Jacob's  comment. 
"Fancy  our  receiving  the  Established  Church  on  terms  of 
amity !" 

"With  reservations,"  remarked  Betty.  "They  might 
come  here,  but  they  wouldn't  ask  us  to  his  sister's." 

"No,  obviously,"  replied  Jacob.  "But  I  don't  think  that 
that  matters." 

"Only  to  this  extent,"  Betty  said,  "that  it's  not  much 
use  trying  to  keep  in  with  them.  Of  course,  I  shall  try  and 
see  Hilda  now  and  then." 

"But  you'll  let  them  come?"  urged  Jacob. 

"Oh  yes!     Why  not?"  Betty  said. 

And  early  in  May  the  visitation  was  actually  made,  and 
Mr.  Phelps  was  revealed  to  Jacob  as  a  decently  representa- 
tive young  Rector,  and  a  proud,  if  reasonably  modest, 


ACHIEVEMENT  377 

father.  He  was  evidently  concerned  to  do  the  right  things 
in  those  unaccustomed  surroundings,  sedulously  avoided 
any  approach  to  controversial  topics,  and,  when  he  and 
Jacob  were  left  alone  while  Betty  and  Hilda  adjourned  to 
the  bedroom  to  perform  some  ceremony  required  by  the 
four-months-old  infant,  became  intensely  earnest  in  his  de- 
sire for  Jacob's  opinion  on  the  novelists  of  the  day.  They 
appeared  to  have  ended  for  Mr.  Phelps  with  Anthony 
Trollope  and  Charles  Kingsley,  though  he  entered  a  caustic 
comment  on  the  "blasphemies"  of  Robert  Elsmere.  Through 
it  all  he  had  the  air  of  a  man  whose  curiosity  and  interest 
were  piqued  by  his  surroundings.  He  might  have  worn 
the  same  manner  if  he  had  been  making  his  first  visit  to 
the  green-room  of  a  theatre. 

Hilda  was  much  more  at  her  ease.  She  was  a  young 
mother,  and  any  comment  she  might  have  had  to  make 
would  necessarily  have  been  influenced  by  that  fact.  Jacob 
thought  her  pretty,  and  was  much  engaged  in  watching  her 
charming  antics  with  her  little  daughter.  Phelps  he  summed 
up  as  being  "all  right,"  and  added:  "But  I've  no  use  for 
him,  of  course.  I  might  as  well  have  been  talking  to  a 
South  Sea  Islander  over  the  telephone."  He  had  brought 
an  early  reference  to  his  acquaintance  with  Ellis — they  had 
met  twice  then — into  the  conversation,  and  had  been  shocked 
to  find  that  Ellis's  name  was  quite  unknown  to  the  Phelps. 

Jacob  was  a  little  impatient  of  Betty's  evident  pleasure 
in  the  re-establishment  of  the  old  relations  with  her  sister. 

"I  didn't  know  you  cared  so  much  for  her,"  he  said. 

"It's  nice  to  feel  that  we  understand  one  another  again," 
Betty  explained.  It  appeared  that  she  and  Hilda  had  "had 
it  all  out"  while  Jacob  had  been  discussing  literature  with 
Phelps,  and  it  had  been  tentatively  suggested  that  Betty  and 
Jacob  might  go  to  stay  for  a  few  days  in  the  Worcestershire 
parsonage,  if  they  would  consent  to  the  fiction — for  paro- 
chial purposes — of  an  antecedent  wedding. 

"We'll  go,  if  you  like,"  Jacob  said.  "I  expect  it'll  be 
pretty  dull." 

But  Betty  shook  her  head.    "Not  on  those  terms,     she 


378  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

said;  and  Jacob,  misunderstanding  her,  protested  that  she 
was  too  sensitive. 

She  did  not  enlighten  him  on  that  occasion. 


ii 

Jacob  finished  his  second  novel  at  the  end  of  April,  and 
submitted  it  in  the  ordinary  course  to  the  publishers  of 
"John  Tristram."  Eric  had  advised  him  that  he  should  in- 
sist upon  some  advance  against  royalties  on  this  occasion, 
and  Jacob  touched  lightly  upon  that  suggestion  when  he 
sent  in  his  manuscript. 

The  interview  that  followed  was  not  entirely  satisfactory. 

"The  Creature  of  Circumstance"  was  more  than  ap- 
proved. Mr.  Norman  especially  gave  it  high  praise,  but, 
speaking  on  behalf  of  the  firm,  he  was  inclined  to  advise  the 
postponement  of  publication  until  after  Mr.  Stahl  had  fin- 
ished the  second  part  of  "John  Tristram."  This  advice, 
Mr.  Norman  explained,  was  a  matter  of  policy.  The  first 
book,  despite  its  good  notices,  had  not  been  a  financial  suc- 
cess. He  appealed  to  his  partner,  who  referred  to  a  type- 
written statement,  and  reported  the  net  sales  to  date  as 
five  hundred  and  twenty-seven  copies,  and  then  passed  over 
the  account  to  Jacob,  who  stared  at  it  steadily  while  the 
gentle  voice  of  Mr.  Norman  continued  the  exposition. 

In  the  circumstances,  he  urged,  it  was  hardly  wise  to 
put  out  a  second  book  in  an  entirely  new  manner,  for  al- 
though "Tristram"  had  not  been  eagerly  sought  for  by  the 
general  public,  it  was  still  selling,  nearly  four  months  after 
publication.  And  if  the  second  part  followed  within  a  rea- 
sonable time,  the  sales  might  be  re-stimulated.  Most  books 
sold  for  six  weeks — seven  or  eight  hundred  copies,  perhaps 
— and  then  the  sale  ceased  absolutely.  "Tristram"  was  obvi- 
ously in  another  class.  It  did  not  appeal  to  a  wide  public, 
but  it  interested  certain  people,  who  recommended  it  to  their 
friends,  and  so  the  sales  went  on,  steadily,  if  slowly.  But 
if  this  second  book  were  published  in  the  autumn,  Mr. 
Stahl's  small  but  potentially  faithful  readers  might  be  alien- 


ACHIEVEMENT  379 

ated.  They  would  expect  more  "Tristrams" ;  they  might  be 
disgusted  to  find  a  fantasy  in  its  place.  Nevertheless,  the 
firm  understood  that  this  might  seem  rather  hard  on  Mr. 
Stahl,  and  they  were  prepared  to  accept  "The  Creature  of 
Circumstance,"  and  to  pay  twenty-five  pounds  advance 
royalties  on  it,  if  the  author  would  consent  to  leave  the 
date  of  its  publication  to  the  firm's  discretion. 

Jacob  listened  to  the  whole  proposition  without  making  a 
single  interruption.  If  he  had  been  alone,  he  might  have 
consented  without  demur.  The  policy  the4;  had  been  out- 
lined was  perfectly  reasonable,  and  was  prompted,  without 
question,  by  a  genuine  regard  for  his  own  success  as  a 
novelist.  But  Betty  was  waiting  for  him  at  their  old 
rendezvous — this  had  been  adjudged  as  another  "occasion" 
— and  he  knew  that  he  dared  not  face  her  with  the  an- 
nouncement that  his  new  book  had  been  "put  back."  They 
had  counted  such  an  enormous  brood  of  chickens  as  emerg- 
ing from  that  next  sitting. 

"I'm  sorry,"  Jacob  said,  with  a  look  of  slightly  harassed 
determination.  "I'm  afraid  I  couldn't  do  that." 

He  knew  that  he  was  perfectly  safe,  that  he  would  have 
no  difficulty  in  placing  the  book  under  discussion  with  an- 
other publisher;  but  he  was  thinking  less  of  that  than  of 
Betty's  disapproval,  and  at  the  same  time  he  was  very 
anxious  not  to  hurt  the  feelings  of  Messrs.  Norman  and 
Goodrich.  He  remembered  that  they  had  befriended  him 
when  he  was  a  rejected  author. 

Mr.  Norman  looked  at  his  partner,  who  fidgeted  with 
some  papers  on  the  table  in  front  of  him. 

"We  were  rather  afraid  .  .  ."  began  Mr.  Norman,  and 
then  waited  for  Jacob's  explanation. 

"I'm  a  perfect  ass  at  business,"  Jacob  said.  He  felt  that 
he  must  be  frank.  He  could  not  play  Farmer's  game,  even 
'?ow  that  he  held  a  winning  hand.  "I  see  your  point,  and  I 
think  it's  a  good  one;  but  I  can't  wait.  I  can't  afford  to 
wait,  you  know.  You  see,  I'm  thirty-six.  I  began  to  write 
rather  late,  and  I  want  now  to  pile  on  everything  I  can.  I'm 
too  old  to  adopt  a  policy  like  yours.  I  couldn't  get  the 


380  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

second  part  of  'Tristram'  finished  before  about  March  next 
year,  and  by  that  time  people  will  have  forgotten  all  about 
me.  I  must  keep  them  going  with  this  next  book.  Besides, 
I  don't  want  to  label  myself  as  a  writer  of  a  certain  class  of 
fiction.  It's  no  good.  I  shan't  stick  to  one  sort,  ever.  Im 
like  that.  I'm  too  .  .  ."  He  hesitated  for  a  word,  and, 
remembering  Eric's  description,  tried  "versatile,"  and  then, 
afraid  of  the  boastful  sound  of  it,  he  added :  "I'm  too  easily 
influenced,  I  suppose.  I'm  sure  it  would  be  a  mistake  to  rub 
in  the  impression  that  all  my  books  will  be  'Tristrams,' 
when  they  most  certainly  won't." 

"But  when  you  are  a  little  better  known  .  .  ."  suggested 
Mr.  Goodrich. 

"Yes,  it  might  be  better  in  the  end ;  but  I  can't  afford  to 
wait,"  remonstrated  Jacob.  He  was  quite  convinced  now 
that  his  own  argument  was  sound. 

"When  did  you  want  us  to  publish  the  new  book  ?"  asked 
Mr.  Norman. 

"Fairly  early  in  the  autumn,"  Jacob  said. 

And  the  firm  gave  way  with  a  readiness  that  was  cer- 
tainly complimentary.  Jacob  had  said  nothing  of  taking  his 
book  to  another  publisher's,  but  his  definite  refusal  of  Mr. 
Norman's  suggestion  had  implied  a  fine  independence,  and 
it  was  encouragingly  evident  that  the  firm  of  Norman  Good- 
rich believed  that  the  novels  of  Jacob  Stahl  would  eventually 
pay  the  cost  of  publication. 

There  was  one  other  point  that  Jacob  had  intended  to 
make  during  the  interview — namely,  a  demand  for  a  bolder 
advertising  campaign  than  had  been  possible  for  "John 
Tristram."  He  had  meant  to  make  several  expert  sugges- 
tions, based  on  his  experience  as  a  writer  of  advertisements, 
but  Norman  and  Goodrich  had  treated  him  so  generously, 
and  had  already  made  so  many  concessions,  that  it  seemed 
to  him  that  any  further  demand  would  smack  of  overbear- 
ance.  He  could  not  endure  the  thought  that  he,  should  seem 
to  be  taking  any  unfair  advantage. 

"They  had  given  way  about  everything,"  he  explained  to 
Betty  in  their  hallowed  basement.  "They're  going  to  pub- 


ACHIEVEMENT  381 

lish  the  'Creature'  early  in  September;  they're  giving  me 
an  advance  of  twenty-five  pounds  on  publication,  and  higher 
royalties.  I  couldn't,  after  that,  turn  round  and  insist  upon 
expensive  advertisement.  'John  Tristram1  has  only  sold 
five  hundred  and  twenty-seven  copies,  you  see,  and  they 
must  have  lost  money  on  it" 

Betty  agreed,  and  speculated  on  the  probability  that 
Jacob  would  make  Norman  Goodrich's  fortunes  as  well  as 
his  own. 

He  had  consented  to  give  them  the  refusal  of  any  sequel 
or  sequels  that  he  might  write  to  his  first  book. 


in 

Jacob  began  the  second  part  of  "John  Tristram"  before 
he  and  Betty  left  London,  and  when  they  went  to  Cornwall, 
early  in  June,  he  had  the  whole  scheme  of  the  book  quite 
clearly  in  his  mind.  He  had  found  it  surprisingly  easy  to 
return  to  his  earlier  manner,  although  he  recognised  that  he 
was  correcting  the  more  obvious  faults  of  his  first  effort. 
Some  of  his  reviewers  had  helped  him  in  that  particular. 

They  took  a  furnished  cottage  some  six  or  seven  miles 
from  Trevarrian  that  year.  Their  income  was  increasing. 
They  could  expect  a  certain  forty  pounds  from  Norman 
Goodrich,  Limited,  in  the  autumn,  and  "Tristram"  had  been 
published  in  America,  and  some  further  additions  might  be 
expected  from  that  source.  Also,  Jacob  had  had  a  slightly 
fantastic  sketch  accepted  by  one  of  the  reviews,  and  he  had 
ideas  for  one  or  two  short  stories  that  he  was  confidently 
counting  upon  as  a  further  source  of  income.  He  thought 
he  knew  now  precisely  where  his  earlier  attempts  at  short- 
story  writing  had  failed. 

They  were  both  full  of  hope  that  summer,  and  found 
great  joy  in  sitting  by  the  sea  and  planning  their  future. 
It  seemed  that  the  road  to  success  lay  clear  and  accessible 
before  them. 

And  when  "The  Creature  of  Circumstance"  was  published 
in  September,  they  were  almost  afraid  that  success  had  come 


382  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

too  soon.  They  were  back  in  London  then,  and,  on  the 
strength  of  their  expectations,  had  taken  a  tiny  flat  near 
Gospel  Oak,  and  bought  furniture  on  the  hire  system. 

The  reviews  of  the  new  book  were  certainly  wonderful. 
Mr.  Gresswell  had  written  that  Mr.  Stahl  was  opening  up  a 
"new  field  of  fiction,"  and  had  achieved  something  that 
might  "justly  be  called  original."  And  their  unknown 
friend  on  the  Morning  Post  had  given  Jacob  a  whole  col- 
umn, and  described  the  book  as  "a  wonderful  effort  of  vision 
and  imagination."  Some  of  the  other  notices  were  nearly 
as  good,  although  the  Times  still  maintained  a  majestic 
silence. 

Betty  laid  the  burden  of  the  book's  failure  on  the  already 
well-weighted  shoulders  of  a  gentleman  in  South  Africa,  an 
individual  whose  works  became  so  absorbingly  interesting 
on  the  Qth  of  October,  that  no  one  had  a  thought  for  the 
reading  of  novels.  But  if  President  Kruger's  ultimatum 
and  its  consequences  were  the  sole  cause  for  the  failure  of 
"The  Creature  of  Circumstance,"  it  is  difficult  to  account 
for  the  fact  that  "John  Tristram"  continued  to  sell  in  drib- 
lets of  seven  and  thirteen  copies  through  November  and 
the  first  half  of  December.  And  in  the  light  afforded  by 
a  later  experiment,  and  in  the  relative  clearness  of  mind 
that  followed  the  taking  of  Pretoria,  Jacob  was  able  to  de- 
cide that  the  matter  of  his  second  book,  not  less  than  the 
unfortunate  moment  of  its  publication,  must  be  held  ac- 
countable for  its  failure.  It  never  sold  five  hundred  copies 
in  all,  and  no  American  publisher  would  look  at  it. 

But  whoever  was  to  blame — Kruger,  Chamberlain,  a 
group  of  South  African  millionaires,  the  novel-reading  pub- 
lic, or  Jacob  himself — the  depressing  fact  that  had  to  be 
faced  through  that  depressing  winter  was  the  partial  failure 
of  their  sources  of  income.  Jacob's  reviewing  exhibited  a 
lamentable  falling-off.  There  was  much  less  space  given  to 
literary  matters  in  the  Daily  Post,  and  the  publishing  season 
was  considerably  influenced  by  the  dominant  topic.  And  it 
seemed  possible  that  Norman  Goodrich  might  not  be  over- 


ACHIEVEMENT  383 

anxious  to  take  up  their  option  on  the  second  part  of 
"John  Tristram"  at  the  beginning  of  the  next  year. 

Betty  had  a  very  anxious  and  difficult  task  to  accomplish 
in  the  allaying  of  Jacob's  gloom,  and  the  stimulation  of  his 
energies  to  complete  the  novel  he  had  in  hand.  She  achieved 
her  purpose  by  a  persistent  threat  to  go  out  and  earn  a  living 
as  a  cook.  She  did  not  intend  it  as  a  threat.  She  was  per- 
fectly willing,  even  eager,  to  find  some  work  that  might 
occupy  her.  She  had  lost  Freda  now.  That  young  woman 
had  soon  tired  of  inactivity  as  a  hanger-on  at  Mrs.  Letch- 
worth's  boarding-house,  had  entered  herself  as  a  proba- 
tioner at  St.  George's  Hospital  in  January,  and  had  now 
volunteered  and  been  accepted  for  Red  Cross  work  at  the 
front. 

Betty  found  time  hanging  heavily  on  her  hands.  None  of 
their  new  acquaintances  greatly  interested  her,  and  although 
she  had  joined  one  of  the  more  practical  societies  that  were 
honestly  trying  to  cater  for  the  real  needs  of  the  soldiers  in 
South  Africa,  that  work  did  not  satisfy  her.  She  wanted  to 
make  money  and  help  with  the  household. 

And  it  was  through  her  endeavours  that  the  threat  came 
into  being.  She  had  actually  succeeded  in  getting  an  offer 
of  eighteen  shillings  a  week  for  a  place  as  cook  in  an  ex- 
perimental amateur  tea-shop,  before  she  mooted  the  propo- 
sition to  Jacob. 

He  opposed  the  scheme  with  great  vigour,  and  finally, 
more  by  pleading  than  argument,  induced  her  to  abandon 
the  project.  But  the  threat  stimulated  him.  He  realised 
that  he  was  doing  less  than  his  best  to  make  an  income,  and 
laboriously  set  himself  to  write  stories  and  sketches  that 
had  some  sort  of  relation  to  the  horrible  subject  of  war. 
He  succeeded  so  far,  that  he  and  Betty  never  quite  touched 
the  fatal  depths  of  insolvency. 

They  were  lucky  enough  to  let  their  little  flat  furnished 
in  April,  1900,  and  Norman  Goodrich,  Limited,  magnifi- 
cently came  up  to  the  scratch  by  advancing  fifty  pounds  on 
the  second  part  of  "John  Tristram,"  and  publishing  it  in 
the  middle  of  May. 


384  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

Jacob  and  Betty  returned  to  the  Cornish  cottage  in  the 
spring  with  a  feeling  that  the  worst  was  over,  and  so  took 
no  part  in  the  awful  celebrations  that  disgraced  London 
during  the  summer. 


IV 

During  that  year  Jacob  wrote  his  fourth  novel,  "The 
Deserted  House,"  the  book  that  brought  him  a  measure  of 
recognition  and  independence.  The  second  part  of  "John 
Tristram"  had  been  a  qualified  success.  It  sold  one  thou- 
sand six  hundred  copies  in  England,  and  so  far  stimulated 
the  sales  of  its  predecessor  in  that  kind,  that  Messrs.  Nor- 
man Goodrich  debated  the  advisability  of  a  second  impres- 
sion. But  "The  Deserted  House"  sold  over  six  thousand 
copies  in  three  months,  and  more  than  twice  that  number 
in  America. 

"In  a  sense,  you  know,  we've  got  there,"  remarked  Jacob, 
as  he  looked  with  a  curiously  detached  interest  at  the  cheque 
for  three  hundred  and  seven  pounds  that  had  arrived  from 
his  American  publishers. 

"I  always  knew  you  would,"  said  Betty.  She  was  far 
more  excited  than  he  was. 

She  leaned  over  his  shoulder,  her  arm  round  his  neck, 
and  they  stared  together  at  the  miraculous  slip  of  paper. 

"It  isn't  only  this,  you  see,  the  actual  cash,"  Jacob  went 
on,  "it's  the  significance  of  it.  I  shall  be  able  to  make  my 
own  terms  for  the  next  book,  I  shall  get  a  market  for  my 
short  stories  in  America,  and  I  shall  be  able  to  give  up  re- 
viewing." 

"We'll  have  a  holiday  to-day,"  Betty  announced. 

"I'm  afraid  not  to-day,  dear,"  Jacob  said.  "I  must  get 
off  those  two  books  I'm  doing.  Gresswell  particularly 
asked  for  them.  To-morrow  .  .  ." 

"Oh,  bother !"  remarked  Betty. 

Jacob  looked  up  at  her  and  smiled.  "You  ought  to  be 
proud  of  having  trained  me  so  well,"  he  said.  "There  was  a 


ACHIEVEMENT  385 

time  when  I  always  wanted  to  slack,  and  you  made  me 
work." 

"You  seem  to  have  got  the  habit  of  working  now,"  she 
said. 

"I  don't  know,"  replied  Jacob.  "I  think  I  shall  take  it 
a  little  easier  in  future ;  but,  you  see,  I'm  playing  a  winning 
game  now.  I've  never  chucked  a  game  when  I  had  it  in 
hand,  but  this  is  the  first  time  in  the  practical  affairs  of  life 
that  I  could  ever  boast  of  being  certainly  on  the  winning 
side." 

Betty  thought  for  a  moment  before  she  answered  him. 

"Then  my  work's  done,"  she  said.  "You  don't  want  me 
any  more." 

He  laughed  gaily,  and  drew  her  down  on  to  his  knee. 
"I'm  supposed  to  have  an  imagination,"  he  said,  "but  I 
cannot  imagine  life  without  you.  My  only  picture  of  it  is 
misery  in  a  Newquay  boarding-house.  That  was  my  one 
idea  when  I  thought  you  weren't  coming  to  Trevarrian,  and 
I've  never  had  another." 

They  discussed  that  topic  for  a  few  minutes,  and  then 
Jacob  said :  "I  don't  know  if  you're  aware  of  it,  my  be- 
loved, but  you  are  certainly  getting  fatter." 

She  jumped  up  at  once,  and  her  hands  went  to  her  waist. 
"Oh,  Jimmy,  don't!"  she  implored  him.  "I've  been 
afraid  .  .  ." 

Jacob  waved  the  cheque  at  her.  "We're  rich,"  he  said. 
"You  shall  go  to  Carlsbad." 


XIX 
THE   INVISIBLE   EVENT 


ONE  morning  in  the  November  of  1902,  Jacob  received  a 
letter  that  had  been  forwarded  by  his  publishers. 

"It  isn't  an  advertisement  from  a  press-cutting  agency," 
he  remarked,  studying  the  envelope,  "so  it's  probably  an 
appreciation  from  another  unknown  admirer." 

"Open  it,"  replied  Betty,  a  little  impatiently.  They  had 
never  been  besieged  by  such  appreciations  as  this.  Jacob's 
work  lacked  that  sentimentality  which  evokes  a  personal 
response  from  young  women  warmed  to  a  hopeful  interest 
in  the  imagined  author,  and  he  and  Betty  were  still  exhil- 
arated by  any  such  individual  attention  from  the  outside 
public. 

"Don't  be  in  a  hurry,"  Jacob  said.  "Let's  savour  the 
bouquet  before  we  taste  the  wine."  He  examined  the  post- 
marks deliberately,  and  then  added  in  a  less  satisfied  tone: 
"Norman  and  Goodrich  are  rotters!  They  must  have  had 
this  in  their  office  for  five  days." 

Betty  had  given  him  up  and  sat  down  to  her  breakfast. 

"I  suppose  you  will  open  it  sometime,"  she  remarked. 

Jacob  smiled.  "Don't  you  realise  how  much  sweeter  it  is 
to  anticipate  a  pleasure  than  to  taste  it  ?"  he  asked,  as  he  at 
last  opened  the  envelope. 

"Read  it  to  me,"  pleaded  Betty,  as  he  still  maintained 
silence ;  and  then  she  got  up  quickly  and  went  over  to  him. 
"What  is  it,  darling?"  she  asked.  "Not  bad  news?" 

"Good  Lord!  After  all  these  years,"  murmured  Jacob. 
He  gave  her  the  letter,  and  walked  over  to  the  fireplace. 

"Is  it  from  .  .  .  Lola?"  asked  Betty. 

He  nodded.    "Practically,"  he  said.    "Read  it." 

386 


ACHIEVEMENT  387 

"DEAR  SIR"  (she  read), 

"Your  wife  has  asked  me  to  write  to  you.  She  would  like  to 
see  you,  but  feels  that  she  would  prefer  not  to  write  on  her  own 
account.  I  may  tell  you,  however,  that  she  has  long  since  forgiven 
you  for  your  desertion  of  her,  although  she  has  no  wish  ever  to 
renew  the  old  relations.  Her  true  reason  for  wanting  to  see  you 
at  the  present  time  is  that  she  has  recently  been  reading  your  novels, 
two  of  which,  I  am  told,  are  intimately  autobiographical,  and  she 
would  like  to  soften  the  impression  of  her  own  character  that  you 
have  apparently  formed.  Since  she  has  been  with  me  here  she  has 
been  the  most  devoted  and  unselfish  of  workers  in  the  greatest  of  all 
causes,  but  her  health  has  been  somewhat  uncertain  for  the  past 
two  months.  I  trust  that  you  will  be  able  to  come  and  see  her  here 
one  afternoon  in  the  course  of  the  next  few  days.  It  is  most  cer- 
tainly your  duty  to  do  so.  ... 

"Yours  faithfully, 

"HELENA  MURGATROYD." 

"Shall  you  go?"  asked  Betty,  when  she  had  finished. 

"I  don't  know.    What  do  you  think  ?"  returned  Jacob. 

"Do  you  want  to  go?"  asked  Betty.  She  was  watching 
him  keenly,  as  if  she  doubted  whether  after  all  these  years 
he  had  not  still  some  tenderness  for  his  wife,  some  feeling 
that  he  would  never  admit. 

Jacob  hesitated.  "I  don't  want  to  see  her,"  he  said,  after 
a  judicial  pause.  "I  would  infinitely  rather  not;  but  it 
seems  rather  mean,  in  a  way,  not  to  go.  And  the  letter  was 
written  nearly  a  week  ago,  and  I've  never  answered." 

"You  can  easily  explain  that,"  Betty  said.  "You  can 
send  Mrs.  What's-her-name  the  envelope." 

"You  don't  want  me  to  go,"  affirmed  Jacob. 

"I  don't  mind  in  the  least,"  Betty  said. 

"I'll  write  and  explain,"  he  volunteered. 

"You'd  better  go,"  she  said. 

For  a  minute  or  two  they  fenced,  and  then  Betty  suddenly 
threw  off  her  reserve. 

"You  must  care  for  her  in  a  way,"  she  said.  "I  don't  like 
to  think  of  your  sitting  there  and  talking  to  her." 

"It  would  be  absolutely  like  talking  to  a  stranger,"  as- 
serted Jacob. 

"Oh,  it  couldn't  be !"  Betty  protested.    "She's  your  wife, 


388  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

and  I  don't  trust  her.  She  might  ask  you  to  go  back  to 
her." 

Jacob  was  too  astonished  to  find  an  apt  reply.  "She  might 
ask,"  he  said,  and  tried  to  express  by  his  tone  the  utter  fu- 
tility of  such  a  request. 

He  felt  so  safe,  so  confident,  and  he  wanted  to  pay  that 
call.  He  saw  it  in  the  light  of  a  new  experience,  an  adven- 
ture. While  he  had  unconvincingly  stated  his  determination 
to  write,  making  some  excuse  to  Mrs.  Murgatroyd,  he  had 
been  picturing  a  rather  delicately  tense  scene  with  Lola. 
As  he  saw  it,  their  meeting  had  the  fine,  remote  air  of  an 
epilogue. 

"We  may  as  well  have  breakfast,  I  suppose,"  remarked 
Betty. 

"Yes,  I  think  we'd  better,"  agreed  Jacob.  He  had  a 
curious  feeling  of  guilt — an  unwarranted  sense  of  having 
done  something  shameful. 

They  ate  their  breakfast  in  silence.  Jacob  had  decided 
that  he  would  not  go  to  see  Lola,  but  he  was  resentful  now. 
He  thought  Betty  had  been  absurdly  prejudiced.  He  cer- 
tainly would  do  nothing  to  hurt  her ;  it  was  unthinkable  that 
he  could  see  Lola  if  Betty  had  any  feeling  about  it,  but  he 
had  expected  her  to  be  more  sensible.  Her  curious  retro- 
spective jealousy  had  shown  that  she  failed  to  understand 
his  love  for  her. 

When  he  had  finished  breakfast,  he  buried  himself  in 
his  newspaper. 

Betty  came  up  to  his  chair  and  gently  took  the  paper  from 
him.  "I'm  sorry,  darling,"  she  said.  "I  hated  something 
in  the  tone  of  that  letter.  It  seemed  to  suggest  an  air  of 
proprietorship.  Of  course  you  must  go.  You'd  better  go 
this  afternoon." 

Jacob  protested  honestly  then,  that  he  had  no  wish  to  obey 
Mrs.  Murgatroyd's  orders. 

"Yes,  you  must,"  Betty  said.  "But  don't  stay  long,"  she 
added. 


ACHIEVEMENT  389 

ii 

Jacob  inquired  for  Mrs.  Murgatroyd.  He  was  not  sure 
whether  his  wife  had  used  her  own  name  during  the  last  nine 
years.  The  neat  parlourmaid  showed  him  into  a  tiny  room 
off  the  hall,  and  returned  almost  immediately.  "Will  you 
come  this  way?"  she  said. 

Mrs.  Murgatroyd  was  sitting  at  an  immense  writing-table, 
that  thrust  one  end  into  the  deep  bay  window  overlooking 
the  well-kept  strip  of  garden  behind  the  house.  She  was  a 
stout,  solid  woman,  with  grey  hair,  and  black,  threatening 
eyebrows.  She  did  not  get  up  when  Jacob  came  into  the 
room,  nor  offer  to  shake  hands  with  him.  She  stared  at 
him  with  an  embarrassing  directness,  and  pointed  to  a  chair 
on  her  left  hand. 

"You  are  Jacob  Stahl?"  she  said. 

"Yes,"  he  said  quietly,  still  standing.  He  was  affronted 
by  her  manner,  and  had  no  intention  of  allowing  himself  to 
be  snubbed. 

"You  are  too  late,"  remarked  Mrs.  Murgatroyd  sharply. 

He  did  not  understand  her.  His  mind  was  still  full  of 
the  anticipated  interview.  Now  that  it  was  so  near  he  had 
begun  to  dread  it.  Lola  would  put  on  an  intolerant  air  of 
righteousness,  he  thought,  and  he  would  have  to  submit. 

"I'm  sorry  that  I've  been  so  long  in  coming,"  he  said 
stiffly.  "It  was  not  my  fault."  He  put  his  hand  in  his 
pocket  and  drew  out  Mrs.  Murgatroyd's  letter.  "I  only 
received  it  this  morning,"  he  explained,  as  he  laid  the  en- 
velope on  the  big  writing-table. 

She  glanced  at  the  letter  without  interest. 

"I  dare  say  it's  just  as  well,"  she  said.  "Poor  Lola  made 
a  point  of  seeing  you,  although  I  strongly  advised  her 
against  it.  No  good  would  have  been  done." 

Jacob  was  puzzled.    "Has  she  gone  away  .  .  ."  he  began. 

"Didn't  you  see  that  the  blinds  were  down  in  the  front 
of  the  house  ?"  asked  Mrs.  Murgatroyd. 

"No,  I  didn't  notice.     Why  .  .  .?"  he  said. 

"She  died  yesterday  morning,"  replied  Mrs.  Murgatroyd 


390  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

coldly.  "She  developed  pneumonia  the  day  after  I  wrote 
to  you.  She  was  only  ill  three  days." 

She  continued  some  explanation,  but  Jacob  did  not  hear 
what  she  said.  He  fumbled  for  the  chair  she  had  indicated 
when  he  came  in,  and  sat  down.  His  mind  was  still  full  of 
that  impossible  interview,  and  he  wanted  to  make  some  im- 
mense atonement  for  the  bitterness  of  his  thoughts.  .  .  . 

Mrs.  Murgatroyd  raised  her  voice  and  dragged  back  his 
wandering  attention. 

"You  need  not  be  too  hard  on  yourself,"  she  said. 

Jacob  was  astonished  by  the  aptness  of  her  remark.  "You 
see,  I  never  imagined  .  .  ."  he  stammered. 

"We  never  do,"  replied  Mrs.  Murgatroyd.  "Perhaps  it's 
better  that  we  shouldn't.  I  should  think  both  of  you  were 
far  too  apt  to  let  your  imaginations  run  away  with  you.  I 
can  answer  for  poor  Lola,  at  least ;  and  from  the  look  of  you, 
I  can  only  suppose  that  you  spend  the  best  part  of  your  life 
in  dreaming." 

"I  dare  say  I  do,"  assented  Jacob.  He  had  a  defence 
ready  in  his  mind;  he  was  prepared  to  maintain  that  the 
dreamers  not  less  than  the  doers  had  their  function  in  so- 
ciety, but  he  recognised  that  such  an  argument  was  out  of 
place.  Moreover,  he  had  lost  his  feeling  of  resentment 
against  Mrs.  Murgatroyd.  Her  manner  might  be  abomi- 
nably brusque,  but  he  admired  people  who  had  the  courage 
to  speak  their  opinions  without  equivocation. 

"Now  that  I  have  seen  you,"  she  was  saying,  "I  know 
that  I  was  justified  in  keeping  you  and  Lola  apart,  when 
Cecil  wanted  to  bring  you  together  seven  or  eight  years  ago. 
I  must  write  to  him.  Have  you  seen  him  lately?" 

"Mr.  Barker?  No,"  replied  Jacob.  "I  haven't  seen  him 
since  I  left  Camden  Town." 

"He  grew  tired  of  you,  I  presume?" 

"He  did  a  great  deal  for  me,"  Jacob  said,  with  a  sudden 
fervour  of  loyalty.  "I  have  always  had  an  immense  respect 
for  him." 

Mrs.  Murgatroyd's  stern,  handsome  face  expressed  no 
shade  of  approval  or  disapproval,  but  she  slightly  shrugged 


ACHIEVEMENT  891 

her  massive  shoulders  as  if  to  dismiss  the  topic  of  Cecil 
Barker,  and  said  abruptly : 

"Would  you  care  to  see  her?" 

Jacob  winced.     "I  don't  know.     Is  it  any  use?"  he  said. 

"Are  you  afraid?"  asked  Mrs.  Murgatroyd. 

"No!  Why  should  I  be?"  he  prevaricated  "Only  I 
don't  .  .  ." 

"I  should  like  you  to  see  her,"  returned  Mrs.  Murgatroyd. 
She  rose  from  her  chair  with  a  firm,  resolute  movement  that 
was  in  itself  an  unchallengeable  order.  "It  will  help  you  to 
understand,"  she  said. 

Jacob  understood  that  he  had  no  alternative. 

Mrs.  Murgatroyd  preceded  him  up  the  stairs. 

in 

The  jaw  had  been  unbound,  and  the  dead,  white  lips  had 
fallen  slightly  apart ;  the  expression  of  the  cold  clay  face  was 
one  of  slightly  self-satisfied  approval. 

Jacob  was  repelled,  but  he  could  not  realise  that  he  was 
looking  at  the  body  of  a  human  being  whom  he  had  onc'e 
held  passionately  in  his  arms. 

She  had  aged  and  altered  in  those  nine  years.  This  was 
the  mask  of  a  woman  he  had  never  known — the  exquisitely 
perfect  effigy  in  wax  of  some  strange  nun  who  had  a  curious 
facial  resemblance  to  Lola. 

Mrs.  Murgatroyd  was  watching  him  curiously,  but  neither 
of  them  spoke. 

He  stood  there  for  a  few  seconds  only,  and  then  turned 
away  his  eyes  and  moved  to  the  door. 

Mrs.  Murgatroyd  covered  up  the  dead  face  on  the  bed  and 
followed  him. 

At  the  hall-door  she  laid  a  strong,  white  hand  on  his  arm. 

"I  believe  you  are  living  with  some  other  woman  now," 
she  said. 

Jacob  turned  upon  her  almost  savagely.  "I  am,"  he 
replied. 

"Are  you  going  to  marry  her  ?"  asked  Mrs.  Murgatroyd, 


392  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

with  the  same  stern  immobility  she  had  shown  throughout. 

"Certainly  I  am,"  returned  Jacob. 

"I  should  take  time  to  think  it  over,"  was  the  unexpected 
advice  he  received. 

"Do  you  mean  that  you  don't  believe  in  marriage?"  he 
asked. 

"Not  for  you,"  replied  Mrs.  Murgatroyd  coldly.  "You 
are  like  Lola,  far  too  impressionable.  Good-bye." 


IV 

He  pondered  that  statement  as  he  walked  down  Brixton 
Hill,  and  found  an  explanation  as  he  waited  in  the  dreary 
shed  on  the  station  platform.  A  porter  advised  him  that  the 
main-line  train  for  Victoria  would  come  in  first,  and  when 
the  local  ran  in  on  the  other  side,  he  had  not  time  to  cross. 
He  had  plenty  of  time  for  reflection.  When  he  reached  Vic- 
toria, he  had  more  than  an  hour's  ride  in  the  yellow  horse- 
bus  that  would  take  him  as  far  as  the  Lower  Heath.  The 
indulgence  of  taking  a  hansom  for  so  long  a  distance  seemed 
too  great  an  extravagance.  London  was  such  an  immense 
place  in  those  days. 

He  decided  that  Mrs.  Murgatroyd  had  made  a  mistake. 
He  was  not  impressionable  in  the  sense  she  had  intended. 
He  reacted  powerfully  to  certain  stimuli,  and  gained  the 
material  of  literature  from  the  experience;  but  he  was  not 
emotional  as  Lola  had  been.  She  had  found  her  comple- 
ment in  a  woman,  in  the  strong,  intellectual  personality  of 
Mrs.  Murgatroyd.  His  own  complement  was  of  quite  an- 
other type.  Lola  had  needed  command,  he  had  needed 
sympathy  and  understanding,  and,  perhaps,  some  re- 
straint. .  .  . 

He  wondered  what  Betty  would  say  when  she  heard  his 
news.  And  as  his  thoughts  turned  towards  her  and  the  little 
flat  in  Hampstead,  the  picture  of  the  waxen  effigy  in  the 
Brixton  house  began  to  lose  its  significance.  For  a  little 
time  he  had  been  strangely  impressed ;  he  had  lost  his  sense 
of  his  relations  with  life ;  he  had  been  alone  again  with  the 


ACHIEVEMENT  393 

problem  of  his  own  individuality.  Now  he  remembered  that 
he  and  Betty  were  free  to  marry  if  they  would,  and  took 
himself  to  task  inasmuch  as  he  seemed  for  a  moment  to  have 
forgotten  her. 

He  had  little  doubt  that  she  would  be  infinitely  relieved. 
The  irregularity  of  their  relations  was  still  a  source  of  small 
inconveniences.  There  were  so  many  people  who  might 
object,  and  Betty  was  a  little  too  conscientious  in  her  desire 
to  avoid  false  pretences.  He  had  overruled  her  objections 
on  more  than  one  occasion,  but  he  knew  that  she  was  never 
happy  in  the  acquaintance  of  anyone  who  was  unaware  that 
she  had  not  gone  through  the  orthodox  ceremony  of  mar- 
riage. "It  might  so  easily  get  round  to  them,"  she  argued, 
"and  then  I  should  feel  horrid  about  it."  He  had  had  to 
admit  sometimes  that  her  position  was  a  little  awkward. 

And  then  there  was  another  point  of  even  greater  impor- 
tance. If  they  were  legally  married,  they  might  have  chil- 
dren. They  had  discussed  that  question  once  or  twice,  and 
had  agreed  that,  however  contemptible  the  moral  objection, 
the  legal  and  social  handicaps  imposed  by  the  conventions 
of  their  times  were  too  great  to  hazard  parenthood.  The 
child  might  be  horribly  penalised.  He  and  Betty  might  die 
and  leave  it  almost  unprovided  for.  They  had  never 
doubted  the  impossibility  of  that  risk. 

His  spirits  rose  as  he  contemplated  the  new  ease  that 
marriage  would  bring  to  them.  He  had  not  changed  his 
opinions  since  he  had  first  argued  with  Betty  in  the  Monta- 
gue Place  boarding-house  more  than  five  years  ago ;  but  the 
game  was  not  worth  the  candle.  Their  courage  served  no 
end.  They  had  not  made,  had  never  tried  to  make,  a  con- 
vert. They  suffered  the  inconveniences  and  trials  of  the 
pioneer  for  no  purpose.  They  were  breaking  no  new  ground 
for  those  that  might  come  after  them.  .  .  . 

He  ran  joyfully  up  the  stairs  to  the  flat,  and  only  pulled 
himself  together  as  he  was  opening  the  front  door.  He 
remembered  then  that,  whatever  benefits  might  follow,  he 
had  to  announce  a  death. 


394  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 


Betty  took  it  very  quietly. 

"Poor  soul!"  she  said.  "I  suppose  she  was  well  looked 
after." 

Jacob  had  no  doubts  on  that  score.  They  talked  for  a  few 
minutes  about  Lola's  past  history,  and  Jacob  attempted  to 
describe  the  personality  of  Mrs.  Murgatroyd. 

"I  suppose  this  will  make  a  considerable  difference  to  us," 
he  remarked  presently.  He  brought  it  out  with  a  casual  air, 
as  if  he  touched  upon  a  subject  of  mutual  agreement.  He 
was  surprised  that  Betty  had  not  initiated  the  topic,  and 
wondered  if  she  had  some  feminine  delicacy  in  making  the 
first  suggestion. 

"Will  it  ?"  she  asked  innocently.    "I  don't  see  why." 

He  raised  his  eyebrows  and  stared  at  her  quizzically. 
"Well!"  he  remarked.  "And  this  from  a  daughter  of 
Beechcombe !" 

She  flushed  a  little.  "Oh,  that!"  she  said.  "Have  you 
changed  your  mind  about  it  all,  then?" 

"Not  in  the  least,"  he  asserted.  "I  believe  everything  I 
believed  five  years  ago,  but  it  isn't  worth  the  fag  now.  I 
want  you  to  be  at  your  ease  with  everyone." 

"You  want  us  to  go  through  a  ceremony  of  marriage?" 
she  insisted. 

"Yes ;  why  not  ?"  he  replied,  with  a  slight  uneasiness. 

She  laughed.    "Oh,  I've  got  beyond  that,"  she  said. 

"Do  you  mean  that  you  would  sooner  not?" 

"Of  course  I  do,"  she  said,  without  hesitation.  "My 
conscience  has  quite  ceased  to  trouble  me  now,  dear.  Look 
at  me,  a  convinced  convert." 

"I  know  you  are,  and  I'm  tremendously  glad,  darling,"  he 
returned ;  "but  I  think  it  will  save  no  end  of  trouble.  .  .  ." 

"Oh,  it's  only  a  convenience,  then?"  she  put  in. 

He  pursed  his  mouth.  "Well,  yes,  I  suppose  so,"  he 
agreed. 

"And  you  want  me  to  deny  my  principles  a  second  time 
for  the  sake  of  convenience  ?"  she  asked. 


ACHIEVEMENT  395 

He  was  puzzled  and  rather  hurt.  "I  don't  understand 
jou,"  he  said. 

"You  never  have,  and  you  never  will,  about  that,"  she 
replied.  "But  I  should  have  thought  you  would  have  real- 
ised that,  after  facing  the  inconveniences  all  these  years,  I 
•  should  prefer  to  go  on  facing  them  now  sooner  than  pretend 
to  a  virtue  that  I  don't  possess — if  it  is  a  virtue?  Don't 
look  so  distressed,  dear.  I'm  not  angry.  But  don't  you 
understand  that  I  have  taken  it  all  rather  more  seriously,  ap- 
parently, than  you  have.  I  tried  to  believe  you  were  right 
five  years  ago,  and  it  took  me  a  long  time,  but  I  have  quite 
come  over  now." 

Jacob  looked  at  the  fire  and  made  no  answer. 

"And  I'm  not  sure"  that  it  would  be  a  good  thing  for  you 
to  marry  me,"  she  went  on. 

He  looked  up  quickly.     "Why  ever  not?"  he  asked. 

"You  might  feel  too  sure  of  me  then,"  she  said  gently ;  and 
when  he  began  to  interrupt  her,  she  leaned  forward  and 
took  his  hand.  "Don't  think  I  doubt  you,  darling,"  she  said. 
"It's  only  that  you  might  feel  tied  if  we  were  married." 

"Not  more  than  I  do  now,"  he  interpolated. 

"Oh  yes,  much  more,"  she  said.  "There's  nothing  in  the 
world  now  to  prevent  us  from  separating  if  we  wanted  to. 
We  are  both  free  to  go  our  own  ways,  just  as  Freda  and  that 
man  Laurence  did.  If  we  were  married,  we  should  feel 
bound  to  one  another.  Just  think  of  some  of  the  married 
people  we  know.  I  wonder  how  long  they  would  go  on  if 
they  weren't  afraid  of  what  people  would  say.  And  so  they 
hang  on  and  are  miserable,  and  hate  each  other,  and  set  an 
awful  example  to  their  children.  But  we've  made  our  dec- 
laration of  independence.  The  people  we  know  best  and  like 
best  know  all  about  us,  and  none  of  them  could  blame  us 
if  we  chose  to  go  our  own  ways.  Could  they?  That's 
part  of  the  bargain." 

She  paused,  but  he  did  not  reply.  He  was  still  holding 
her  hand  and  gazing  into  the  fire. 

"Well,"  she  urged  him.  "Isn't  it  true?  What  are  you 
thinking  about?" 


396  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

"I  was  thinking  of  that  farmhouse  in  Trevarrian,"  he 
said,  "and  of  you.  Particularly  of  one  evening  when  I  said 
to  you  that  some  day  we  should  laugh  at  all  our  miseries — 
your  miseries  they  were  chiefly.  But,  good  Lord !  I  never 
thought  that  the  time  would  come  when  I  should  be  urging 
you  to  marry  me  and  you  wouldn't  have  me  at  any  price." 

"I  think  I  take  things  more  seriously  than  you  do,"  she 
said. 

"Yes ;  you  are  stronger  and  more  consistent  all  through," 
Jacob  said  thoughtfully.  "You're  thorough,  and  I  suppose 
I'm  not.  When  you're  convinced,  you  stick  to  it.  I  ought 
to  be  almighty  proud  of  myself  for  having  converted  you." 

"You  did  it  very  thoroughly,"  she  said. 

He  smiled  and  kissed  her,  and  then  he  got  up  and  began 
to  pace  the  room. 

"This  is  the  invisible  event  that  we  made  mouths  at  for  so 
long,"  he  said.  "Do  you  remember  the  quotation?  I  think 
it's  Hamlet.  And,  good  Heavens !  how  truly  great  we  were 
with  our  immense  arguments !  Oh,  Betty,  think  of  all  that 
time  in  Montague  Place." 

"I  was  very  silly  then,"  she  admitted  quietly. 

"You  weren't,"  Jacob  replied.  "You  were  consistent,  that's 
all.  You  were  right  then,  and  you  are  right  now.  You've 
always  been  true  to  yourself.  The  belief  or  unbelief  in 
the  convention  of  marriage  is  of  no  importance  whatever. 
The  thing  is  that  you've  always  tried  to  do  what  you  be- 
lieved to  be  right.  Yes,  even  when  you  denied  your  con- 
scie.nce  and  came  to  Trevarrian." 

He  stopped  his  walk  up  and  down  the  room,  and  knelt  by 
her  chair.  "You're  very,  very  wonderful,  my  beloved 
Betty,"  he  said.  "You  needn't  be  afraid  that  I  should  ever 
chafe  at  the  thought  that  I  was  tied  to  you.  I  want  to  be 
bound  by  any  bond  that  could  hold  me  a  tiny  bit  closer.  I'm 
only  an  unimportant  part  of  you." 

For  a  few  moments  they  held  each  other  tightly  without 
speaking,  and  then  Jacob  released  himself. 

"But  we  are  going  to  be  married  within  a  week,  all  the 
same,"  he  said. 


ACHIEVEMENT  397 

"I  would  sooner  not,"  Betty  replied  firmly. 

"I'm  sorry,  dear,"  he  returned ;  "but  there's  a  reason." 

"What  reason?"  she  asked,  with  a  hint  of  obstinacy  in 
her  voice. 

"I  want  to  see  a  little  Betty  and  a  little  Jimmy,"  he  said ; 
"and  we  can't  ever  do  that  until  .  .  ." 

"I  don't  mind,"  she  interrupted  him — "even  as  things  are 
now,  I  mean." 

"I  do,"  Jacob  said.  "It  wouldn't  be  fair  to  them.  We've 
agreed  about  that.  It  isn't  worth  the  risk.  They  might 
blame  us  afterwards.  No,  darling,  you  sacrificed  your  con- 
science once  for  me,  and  now  you've  got  to  sacrifice  it  again 
for  them." 

She  did  not  answer  him  at  once.  She  was  leaning  for- 
ward, her  chin  in  her  hands,  staring  at  an  engraving  of  a 
Madonna  and  Child  on  the  opposite  wall. 

"What  a  silly  world  it  is!"  she  said  at  last. 


XX 

THE   BEGINNING   OF   LIFE 


THE  matron  of  the  Nursing  Home  advised  Jacob  to  re- 
turn in  two  or  three  hours.  He  looked  at  his  watch, 
and  found  that  the  time  was  a  quarter  past  six. 

"It  might  go  on  all  night,  I  suppose  ?"  he  said,  hoping  for 
a  firm  denial  of  such  a  pessimistic  estimate. 

"You  can  never  be  quite  sure,"  the  matron  replied  cheer- 
fully. "But  I  don't  expect  a  very  long  confinement  in  this 
case;  personally,  I  should  think  the  child  will  be  born  early 
to-morrow  morning." 

Jacob  attempted  no  contradiction  of  expert  opinion,  but 
in  his  own  mind  he  was  quite  convinced  that  it  would  be 
earlier. 

"And  I  may  come  back  about  half-past  eight  ?"  he  asked. 
"I  shan't  be  in  your  way?" 

The  matron  smiled.  "We  don't  take  any  notice  of  hus- 
bands at  these  times,"  she  said.  "You  can  use  this  room  as 
if  it  was  your  own." 

Jacob  expressed  his  gratitude.  He  was  very  glad  that  he 
and  Betty  had  decided  upon  a  Nursing  Home.  Everyone 
about  the  place  was  so  efficient,  and  the  matron  was  quite 
charming.  .  .  . 

So  far  everything  had  gone  splendidly.  Betty  had  packed 
all  her  things  ten  days  before,  and  when  the  first  symptoms 
had  declared  themselves,  he  had  gone  out  and  found  a  four- 
wheeler,  and  Betty  had  been  put  to  bed  in  the  Home  before 
the  labour  pains  began. 

He  had  sat  with  her  for  more  than  an  hour,  holding  her 
hand,  and  wondering  if  she  were  concealing  her  agony  from 
him,  or  if  those  recurring  spasms  were  not  really  so  awful  as 

398 


ACHIEVEMENT  399 

he  had  imagined.  She  had  declared  that  if  the  pains  were 
not  much  worse  than  those  she  was  suffering,  she  could 
bear  them  almost  with  a  smile.  But  they  had  both  antici- 
pated a  steady  increase  of  torture  as  the  time  approached, 
although  neither  of  them  had  spoken  their  forebodings. 

"You'll  go  out  and  get  yourself  some  dinner,"  she  had  said 
as  he  was  leaving  her,  and  he  had  been  touched  by  her 
thought  of  him  at  such  a  moment. 


ii 

There  was  a  smell  of  frost  in  the  air,  and  he  breathed  it 
with  a  feeling  of  exhilaration  when  the  door  of  the  Nursing 
Home  closed  behind  him.  He  felt  released.  For  a  moment 
he  was  glad  to  be  alone.  He  wondered  where  he  could  get 
dinner.  Maida  Vale  seemed  a  very  remote  place ;  and  then 
he  remembered  a  restaurant  in  Chapel  Street. 

But  as  he  turned  with  a  sudden  determination  towards  the 
Edgware  Road,  all  the  spirit  went  out  of  him.  Something 
called  to  him  and  dragged  him  back.  How  could  he  go  and 
eat  when  Betty  was  lying  there  in  pain  ?  He  was  afraid  to 
go  so  far  away. 

He  turned  and  looked  back  into  the  feebly  lighted  depths 
of  the  broad  avenue. 

He  had  two  hours  to  get  through.  He  must  not  return 
until  half-past  eight.  The  matron  had  been  very  kind,  but 
obviously  he  was  a  nuisance,  and  he  could  do  no  good  there. 
Betty  had  every  possible  attention.  She  would  not  be  alone 
for  a  single  moment.  And  he  had  solemnly  promised  her 
that  he  would  go  and  have  some  dinner.  He  need  not  go  so 
far  as  Chapel  Street;  there  was  a  dairy  at  the  corner  of 
Clifton  Road  that  would  probably  be  open  until  eight  o'clock. 

The  dairy  was  nearly  empty,  and  he  sat  down  near  the 
door.  The  waitress  brought  him  a  printed  menu-card,  but 
the  name  of  food  made  him  feel  sick.  He  ordered  coffee, 
bread-and-butter,  and  an  egg. 

He  was  immensely  concerned  with  his  own  carelessness. 
He  ought  to  have  left  instructions  at  the  Nursing  Home  as 


400  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

to  where  he  might  be  found  if  he  were  urgently  needed.  He 
went  over  to  the  counter  and  asked  the  manageress  if  there 
was  a  telephone  he  might  use;  but  she  told  him  that  their 
telephone  was  out  of  repair,  and  began  a  long  story  of  her 
grievances  against  the  National  Telephone  Company.  He 
heard  every  detail  with  a  miraculous  comprehension.  He 
felt  that  he  was  attending  to  the  history  of  some  extraordi- 
nary tragedy.  He  pictured  the  manageress  suffering  the 
most  excruciating  agony  until  a  new  telephone  instrument 
should  be  born  to  her. 

The  torture  of  it  was  unendurable.  "Oh,  it's  bound  to 
come  soon,"  he  said  with  great  earnestness.  "It  must. 
They  couldn't  leave  you  waiting  like  that  for  long.  No  one 
could." 

He  did  not  hear  her  reply.  He  went  back  to  the  table  on 
which  his  meal  had  been  laid,  and  tried  to  eat.  He  could  not 
see  that  the  plump  manageress  was  grossly  offended — that 
she  thought  he  had  been  making  a  portentous  joke  of  her 
grievance. 

He  could  not  eat  his  egg  or  his  bread-and-butter,  although 
he  tried  to  keep  his  promise  to  Betty.  He  felt  so  sick  that 
he  was  afraid  to  stay  in  the  dairy.  He  drank  his  coffee,  paid 
the  bill,  and  went  out. 

It  was  a  quarter  past  seven,  and  he  decided  that  he  would 
go  back  at  once  to  the  Nursing  Home,  and  walk  up  and 
down  outside  the  house  until  half-past  eight.  He  ran  most 
of  the  way. 

He  wanted  to  think,  but  his  mind  refused  to  consider  any 
subject  but  Betty's  agony.  He  wanted  fervently  to  share  it 
with  her.  He  had  read  in  some  feminist  book  that  women 
had  all  the  pain  and  men  the  pleasure  in  this  business  of 
bringing  children  into  the  world.  He  admitted  that  the 
statement  was  a  true  one,  but  the  penalty  paid,  the  loss  in- 
curred, was  man's.  He  would  gladly  have  given  ten  years 
of  life  if  he  could  have  shared  the  pain  with  Betty.  How 
he  would  have  welcomed  physical  pain  as  a  relief  from  this 
torture  of  waiting,  this  utter  inability  to  spare  Betty  a  single 
pang  of  her  throes! 


ACHIEVEMENT  401 

And  this  was  only  the  beginning.  For  six,  nine,  perhaps 
twelve  hours  he  might  have  to  wait  in  that  contradictorily 
cheerful  sitting-room,  listening,  suffering,  like  some  tor- 
tured victim  of  war  forced  to  witness  the  outrage  and  mur- 
der of  his  wife. 

in 

At  five  minutes  to  eight  he  rang  impatiently  at  the  bell  of 
the  Nursing  Home. 

The  cheerful  matron  was  in  the  hall. 

"If  you  listen,"  she  said,  "you'll  hear  something." 

He  caught  his  breath,  and  heard  a  thin,  but  fierce  and 
prolonged  scream — the  indignant,  resentful  cry  of  the  new- 
born infant. 

"By  Jove !  it  has  got  a  voice,"  Jacob  said  hysterically.  He 
was  quite  unashamed  of  the  tears  that  were  running  down 
his  cheeks.  .  .  . 

The  doctor  came  into  the  waiting-room  a  few  minutes 
later.  He  was  a  quiet,  rather  shy  man,  with  none  of  the 
mannerisms  of  the  general  practitioner. 

He  said  that  Betty  had  been  splendid,  and  that  the  child 
was  a  fine  boy  weighing  eight  and  a  half  pounds.  "I  gave 
her  a  whiff  of  chloroform  at  the  end,"  he  added.  "You  can 
see  her  for  a  minute — not  longer — if  you'll  wait  for  a  quar- 
ter of  an  hour." 

Jacob  felt  that  he  loved  this  controlled,  efficient  specialist, 
who  had  so  wonderfully  wrought  a  miracle,  and  was  now 
quietly  hurrying  away  to  spend  all  his  gifts  of  knowledge, 
foresight,  and  endurance  in  yet  another  exercise  of  his 
superhuman  abilities. 

Jacob  wished  that  it  was  within  his  power  to  confer  some 
stupendous  honour  upon  so  worthy  and  lofty-minded  a 
recipient.  ... 

IV 

Betty  was  lying  on  her  back  with  no  pillow  under  her 
head.  She  was  very  pale  after  the  chloroform,  but  quite 


402  THE    INVISIBLE    EVENT 

conscious.  She  smiled  feebly  as  Jacob  bent  down  and 
kissed  her. 

"Is  it  a  nice  baby?"  she  whispered. 

He  straightened  himself  and  looked  round  the  room.  The 
nurse  had  gone  away  for  a  moment,  but  he  guessed  that  the 
child  must  be  lying  in  the  little  lace-trimmed  cot  that  stood 
upon  two  chairs  near  the  foot  of  the  bed. 

He  went  and  peered  in,  and  saw  nothing,  and  then  he 
nervously  lifted  the  tiny  blanket  that  covered  some  small 
object  crouched  in  the  middle  of  the  cot — a  little,  wizened, 
naked  thing  it  was,  with  purple  blotches  on  its  body,  and  a 
thick  red  down  on  its  head.  And  as  he  lifted  the  blanket  it 
wriggled  and  began  again  to  cry  fiercely. 

Jacob  dropped  the  blanket  as  if  he  had  been  stung,  and 
returned  to  the  bed.  Betty  was  lying  with  closed  eyes. 

"It's  a  lovely  baby,"  he  said  gently,  "with  a  lot  of  hair. 
The  doctor  told  me  it  weighed  eight  and  a  half  pounds." 

She  opened  her  eyes  and  smiled  again. 

"Is  it  really?"  she  asked. 

"Rather,"  whispered  Jacob.     "I  say,  are  you  all  right?" 

She  nodded  contentedly. 

"I  must  go,"  Jacob  said,  bending  over  her  again.  "I 
hear  the  nurse  coming  back." 

She  murmured  something  that  he  could  not  catch,  and 
then  she  repeated  it  in  a  firmer  voice. 

"Did  you  get  your  dinner?"  she  asked. 


For  some  time  after  he  left  her  he  could  think  of  nothing 
but  her  amazing  care  for  him ;  and  then  he  remembered  that 
poor  little  naked  creature  under  the  blanket  in  its  lace- 
trimmed  cot. 

That  was  their  son — the  magical  child  that  had  come,  none 
knew  whence,  to  take  his  place  in  the  world;  a  new  being 
sprung  wonderfully  to  life  to  claim  his  heritage  of  the  flesh 
and  proclaim  his  individuality.  He  and  Betty  had  been 
joined  by  a  third  personality,  of  which  they  knew  nothing, 


ACHIEVEMENT  403 

neither  its  origin  nor  its  character,  and  for  which  they  were 
become  utterly  and  solely  responsible. 

After  he  had  returned  to  the  lonely  little  flat,  Jacob  con- 
tinued to  ponder  that  inscrutable  happening.  He  felt  more 
in  touch  with  the  world  than  he  had  ever  felt  before,  and 
yet  he  had  a  sense  that  he  was  on  the  verge  of  some  tran- 
scendental discovery. 

"This,"  thought  Jacob  Stahl,  "is  the  beginning  of  my 
life." 


ENVOY 

THE   RENEWAL   OF   EFFORT 

I  HAVE  followed  the  story  of  Jacob  Stahl's  life  up  to  his 
forty-first  year,  and  left  him  to  face  new  beginnings  on 
the  night  of  Friday,  the  twenty-second  of  January,  1904. 
Beyond  that  point  his  history  need  not  be  told  in  detail. 
The  character  of  his  struggle  has  changed.  I  leave  him  no 
longer  fighting  the  resistances  offered  by  the  economic  and 
ethical  forces  of  society.  Ten  years  later  his  position  in 
the  world  is  established  as  firmly  as  is  possible  in  a  com- 
munity such  as  ours — a  community  founded  on  a  basis  so 
radically  unstable,  that  the  whole  fabric  totters  whenever 
that  most  fallible  principle  of  credit  or  confidence  is  brought, 
however  momentarily,  into  disrepute.  And  with  the  prac- 
tical extinction  of  Jacob's  need  for  opposition  in  this  lesser 
social  sense,  he  emerges  into  another  conflict  of  so  different  a 
type  that  it  cannot  be  satisfactorily  treated  in  the  pages  of 
a  novel.  I  have  written  explicitly  of  his  attitude  towards 
religion,  but  I  have  said  little  or  nothing  of  his  relations 
with  God.  Yet  it  should  be  plain  to  those  who  have  found 
any  sympathy  with  Jacob  Stahl,  that  he  could  never  rest 
content  with  any  such  attainment  as  was  provided  by  the 
comfort  of  his  wife's  love,  by  the  fine  unselfish  joy  he  finds 
in  the  care  of  his  three  children,  or,  least  of  all,  by  such 
satisfactions  as  come  to  him  from  his  modest  achievements 
in  the  world  of  letters. 

He  is  ever  at  the  beginning  of  life,  reaching  out  towards 
those  eternal  values  that  are  ever  beyond  his  grasp.  He  is 
handicapped  in  many  ways,  and  must  continually  regret  his 
own  ignorances  and  intellectual  limitations,  but  he  has  not 
been  threatened  by  that  decay  of  mind  which  slowly  petrifies 

404 


ENVOY  .  405 

and  finally  kills  those  who  fall  into  the  habit  of  fixed  opin- 
ions. 

Indeed,  he  is  far  less  critical  than  he  once  was,  and  some- 
times deplores  with  a  touch  of  whimsicality  the  consequent 
weakening  of  his  abilities  as  a  novelist.  "It  is  an  admirable 
thing,  no  doubt,"  he  says,  "to  find  good  in  everybody,  and 
I  admit  that  the  good  is  always  there  if  you  will  look  for  it. 
But  you  might  as  well  try  to  paint  sunsets  in  monochrome 
as  write  a  novel  with  no  villains  in  it."  But  he  finds  a  solu- 
tion to  that  problem  in  the  fact  that  "goodness,"  like  other 
qualities,  is  only  relative,  and  so  discovers  the  means  for  the 
necessary  contrasts  he  desires,  and  smiles  when  his  critics 
deplore  what  they  call  his  "loss  of  virility." 

And  that  earnest  search  of  his  for  some  aspect  of  per- 
manent truth  keeps  his  spirit  young.  Only  the  form  of  his 
struggle  has  changed.  He  may  be  content  with  his  worldly 
circumstance,  rich  in  his  unchanging  love  for  Betty  and  her 
children,  but  he  can  never  be  satisfied  with  himself  nor  with 
his  own  achievement.  He  has  great  ambitions  to  write  a 
long  essay  on  the  intrinsic  struggle  of  the  spirit  as  revealed 
to  him  by  the  introspections  of  his  own  life;  but  while  he  has 
a  volume  of  admirably  phrased  notes  on  various  aspects  of 
his  own  development,  he  admits  that  he  still  lacks  sight  of 
some  definite,  guiding  motive  that  shall  one  day,  he  hopes, 
give  form  and  purpose  to  the  whole.  He  would  still  describe 
himself,  in  Emerson's  words,  as  "a  candidate  for  truth." 

Virtue  lies  only  in  the  continual  renewal  of  effort;  the 
boast  of  success  is  an  admission  of  failure. 


THE  END 


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